Advisor | May 2025
The current banking risiko will most likely change the reference scenario not only for customers, but also for the professionals of the banks involved, as more structured and different realities could be created than we know them today.
It is hoped that the new scenario can offer new opportunities for both customers and professionals, creating or strengthening current realities and making them converge towards broader and more diversified objectives and customer segments.
For banks, financial advisor networks and savings management companies, Italy is certainly a market that still offers great growth prospects, both in terms of the conversion of liquidity into current accounts and in terms of protection and supplementary pensions.
This explains why after years of inaction, banks, also thanks to a three-year period of exceptional results driven by positive interest rates, have decided to raise the stakes through acquisitions of product companies and public offers to purchase or exchange other banks.
What is certain is that to reach a stable and more consolidated market, one must go through a highly turbulent and destabilizing period for both customers and professionals.
71% of customers of banks directly or indirectly involved in the current banking risiko are worried for essentially four reasons.
The first in order of importance is the fear for bank customers of changing their contact person (81%), that their branch will be closed (69%), that they may run into bureaucratic (62%) or operational (54%) complications related to the integration of different banks.
Even the professionals of the banks involved in the current game of risiko have 76% of the concerns that, on closer inspection, seem to be in some way mirroring those of their customers.
For bank employees, the main fear is that of staff reduction (79%), the closure or merger of several branches (63%), demotion (51%), change of role (39%) and loss of customers (35%).
These are understandable and understandable fears, which naturally arise in the face of uncertainty about the outcome of all the operations underway, some of which have been announced for months.
On the other hand, banks not involved in the current game of risiko could benefit from the climate of uncertainty that grips the professionals of banks under purchase or exchange offers, if it were not for the fact that for many it would seem desirable to wait for the outcome of these offers, whether hostile or not, before deciding to change sides.
It is therefore essential at this time that the entire front line management of the banks involved in the current game of risiko knows how to rally around their professionals and their networks, assuring every one of the facts that whatever the outcome of the operations in progress, there will be no shortage of opportunities.
Opportunities that could be for growth, change and repositioning in a market that has perhaps been the same for too long and not always able to grasp external stimuli.
We are certain that, as the great Eduardo De Filippo said, the night must pass, and that the following day will reserve days of radiant sunshine especially for the best and most fearless professionals.
Nicola Ronchetti