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Grâce à mon épargne, je me suis vu accorder le prêt.

Grâce à mon épargne, je me suis vu accorder le prêt.
Thanks to my savings, I was granted the loan.
From Lesson 361:Indirect passive (se voir, s'entendre)·French

Questions & Answers about Grâce à mon épargne, je me suis vu accorder le prêt.

Why do we use se voir accorder instead of the normal passive voice here? Can't I just say J'ai été accordé le prêt?
In French, you cannot make a person the subject of a passive sentence if they were the indirect object in the active version. You can say On m'a accordé le prêt (They granted the loan to me), but J'ai été accordé is grammatically impossible. To keep the focus on 'I' as the subject, French uses the structure se voir plus an infinitive, which translates the idea of 'to see oneself be granted'.
Does the past participle vu ever need to agree with the subject in this structure? For example, if the speaker is a woman?
In this specific sentence, no. With se voir followed by an infinitive, the past participle only agrees if the reflexive pronoun (me) is the direct object. Because the verb accorder takes an indirect object for the person (accorder quelque chose à quelqu'un), the pronoun me functions as an indirect object. Therefore, vu remains invariable, even if the speaker is female.
Could I use s'entendre instead of se voir here since they are both indirect passive alternatives?
Not in this case. While both bypass the passive voice constraint, s'entendre (literally 'to hear oneself') is used when the action involves speaking or being told something, such as Je me suis entendu dire (I was told). For actions like being granted a loan, se voir is the correct choice because it describes experiencing an outcome.
Why does the sentence start with Grâce à instead of Parce que?
Grâce à translates to 'thanks to' and is followed directly by a noun or pronoun (mon épargne). You use it to express a positive cause. Parce que means 'because' and must be followed by a full clause with a subject and a verb, so it wouldn't work directly in front of just a noun.

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