After receiving a French Master degree in law and a Master in Public Affairs from the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, Françoise Palle Guillabert joined the Banque de France as an Assistant Manager, where she spent three years as a financial analyst. In 1989, she was assigned to the French Banking Commission, the prudential oversight authority for banks affiliated with the Banque de France.
She was then appointed to the Treasury department of the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance in 1994, where she served as Deputy to the Head of the Financial Markets Office before being named General Secretary of the French Privatisation Committee in 1996. In 1999, she became Head of the Banque de France’s Professional Regulations Department, a legal arm of the French Credit Institutions and Investment Firms Committee (CECEI), the body responsible for authorising institutions to provide banking services, and Head of the French Banking and Financial Regulations Committee (CRBF), which reviews all that body’s applicable laws and regulations.
In April 2003, she moved to the French Banking Federation as Head of the Retail Banking and Remote Banking department.
Since October 2008, Françoise Palle-Guillabert has been the Director General of the French Association of Specialised Finance Companies (Association des Sociétés Financières-ASF), a professional association that comprises all specialised credit institutions: 310 companies, finance companies and specialised bank. (consumer credit, home loans, leasing, factoring, guarantees and financial services).