Crossing the channel.

British financial services suppliers are stepping up their efforts in Europe, using France as one base form which to get a toehold in Euroland.

While some UK banks have been in France for years, their names are not well-known to the average French person. UK banks attempting to woo

Curiously, with the exception of News Banque (part of Bank of Scotland), they have all opted to keep their Anglo-Saxon name against the traditional consideration of French nationalistic zeal. And apart from Barclays, their tactics are similar: seek out clients through telemarketing and TV commercial teasers, or form alliances with estate agents and prominent financial intermediaries which then front for them. With little brand recognition in France, these are the only weapons they have, according to Paris bankers.

British entrants' principal products are home and consumer loans. And all seem to have done their homework well.

According to a recent TMO-Crep study, credit among French households was poised to rise 9 percent in 1998. Currently, 28 percent of the population has some sort of credit, with the growing propensity to borrow credited to lower interest rates and the relatively small percentage of subscribed consumer credit compared with other Western countries.

Abbey National, the fifth-largest British bank in the UK, first entered the French market through taking over Ficofrance in 1990. Three years later, Ficofrance took on its owner's brand name and its activities were refocused on selling home loans to private clients.

In France, Abbey has six agencies, three offices and a staff of 20 manning its main telephone switchboard. It recently started selling consumer credit - with rates starting at 5.95 percent - and is toying with six European-centric unit trust offerings.

Woolwich has also been in France since the early 1990s. Its primary line of business is mortgages and home loans. Woolwich relies less on direct banking and more on its 20 branch offices, staff of 217, and agreements with leading real estate groups such as Century 21. "We are just one of the banks these agents work with and they decide when and where to pitch our rates and services to their clients," explained Thierry Gillouin, operational marketing manager.

The newest arrival to the credit scene is News Banque, part of Bank of Scotland. With 140 telemarketers, News Banque's approach is slightly different. It sells consumer credit directly to customers and by the bias through household goods chain distributors for whom it offers customer credit facilities.

"With some of our partners, we use our own name. With others, we adopt a more generic name or the name of the store," said Pierre De Barrau, communications director at News Banque France.

From a marketing perspective, there is an underlying consensus that the French tend to associate banking with the UK, an image reinforced by the historic prominence of the City of London.

"Sure, people ask about our origins. We wanted to use a British word [News] because the British have a good reputation for finance... And we use a French term [Banque] as opposed to 'Bank' to reassure our French customers," explained De Barrau. "Keeping our British name gives us a serious side," Gillouin agreed.

News Banque targets customers via direct marketing, advertising in TV magazines and through its French partner Le Comptoir des Entrepreneurs, a French financial firm specialising in housing loans.

"We play on the rapid processing of applications which traditional French banks don't necessarily offer," De Barrau said.

Abbey National distributes its home-owner loans directly to consumers. Combining a direct marketing approach with creating brand name recognition, Abbey National recently aired a commercial featuring an English 'gentleman farmer'. Without his bowler hat and umbrella, he looks into the eyes of TV viewers and explains in heavily accented French why they should give their business to an English bank.

"A lot of market research went into finding the right character. Many French would turn off to being sold credit by a stereotypical Englishman," explained Corinne Cochez, marketing and communications director at Abbey National.

"We used a well-known British TV personality in France, David Lowe, to get the message across. We've since stopped the ad but may do a new one to promote our consumer credit line."

Woolwich admitted to doing very little direct marketing. "We rely more on our relationships with real estate agents who do the selling for us," commented Gillouin.

The fact that these banks should seek out partnerships with French banks to sell products is significant, and there are numerous examples of link-ups. Abbey National has entrusted the management of its new unit trusts, for example, to the French bank CCF. American Express Bank pitches both Abbey National and Woolwich credit lines to its customers. Woolwich also works with a number of banks, including Banque Worms.

News Banque has a reciprocal agreement with Le Comptoir des Entrepreneurs, to cross-sell each others' products.

"News Banque's credit rates aren't the only reason we decided to work with them. We wanted to enlarge our own services and News Banque has a good background in consumer credit. In the long run, we may look into this partnership as a way to get a foothold in England," said Ann Baslez, director of communication at Le Comptoir des Entrepreneurs.

Branding and distribution apart, the relative success of these British banks in selling credit to the French resides partly in their attractive fixed and variable rates (starting at 3.95 percent for Abbey) and the low overheads of selling products over the telephone.

So far, only Barclays is determined to export its credit cards business to France where it hopes to pick up a potential 4.6 million new Barclaycard holders.

Time will tell if citizens in France, where 53 million credit/debit cards are already in circulation, need or want more plastic in their wallets.