1. there is less reliance on credit for day to day spending.
2. banks are liable, so they're more careful. I don't get offers by mail for credit cards,
and the card I do have has stricter limits.
3. a national ID system
4. specifically for real estate, separate regulation exists.
You cant buy or sell real estate nor take out a mortgage without going through a notary
(heavily protected profession), who ensure that the real estate and the loan to pay for it remain linked.
They're awful in their own, different way. Did you follow any of the SRLS stuff? Guess who wailed and gnashed their teeth that barbarian hordes would descend on Italy if notaries weren't allowed to collect thousands of Euros for registering limited liability companies?
It really is amazing how until the current three credit reporting agencies came long, nobody in the history of humanity had managed to obtain a loan. We owe them a lot for inventing the entire idea of lending money.
Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, creditors have different interest rates and different loan terms for different risk pools. Your risk pool is determined, in part, by your history of borrowing and paying back money.
It isn't that lending doesn't exist without credit history, it's everyone gets the same shitty terms and shitty interest rate and banks are much more conservative in lending.
Apparently the other commenter is right, I should've used some kind of sarcasm mark.
The parent comment I was replying to seemed not to understand how a functioning credit/lending market could exist without Equifax-like centralized reporting agencies. The sarcastic point was that credit and lending existed and worked for millennia previously.
It's a bit deeper than lend/not lend. Interest rates are determined in part by risk -- higher risk means higher rates are required to cover defaults across a given risk pool. Without granular risk assessments, I would think that the interest for everyone would be a bit higher, as it has to be enough to cover defaults. Is that the case? That is, in locations with detailed credit reporting, do people with very good credit end up with lower interest rates than borrowers in locations that don't have a credit reporting system?
In the long history of humanity, there was no real possibility of somebody living, say, in Oakland, California, to obtain a loan from a bank located in New York, without even meeting anybody from that bank or having any prior relationship or specific recommendations. Moreover, if you are a representative of lower classes, the best loan you could hope for is probably your local grocer deferring a payment for a week or so. But don't try to pull that on a grocer in the next village, unless you're a noble or something - he doesn't know you, so cash is king. Of course, if you're noble living in a big castle, things are different for you. Unfortunately, most of the people weren't. That's why prototype credit reporting agencies - with people literally having books where they recorded all kinds of info about people, like where they work, how they pay, do they have affairs (there's a risk they'd drop everything and run away with their affair partner if they do), are they gambling, are they drinking, etc. That's what gave the raise to the modern credit reporting agencies. But before that you surely had access to loans, but not nearly at the scale you have now. You didn't have online comparison of 50+ lenders competing to give you, sight unseen, the best rate. You had to convince your local banker, and if he didn't like you (for any reason, including speaking funny, having wrong complexion or not being in a good relationship with one of his friends), tough luck, no loan for you.
Not from France, but elsewhere in the EU there generally are registries of bad debts (with libel-like protections requiring the information on them to be true or removed).
So the bank looks at your income, possibly your expenses, and whether you've been defaulting in the past. If it's your bank, which it usually is, then they can probably mine your transaction history in more detail to decide how trustworthy you are.
