The "real weight on the balance sheets of Italian banks is not the cost of labour" but the "write-downs of NPLs", which reached 10 billion euros in the first nine months of the year and the recovery of which, if it were "managed in house by employees, could give income”. This was written by the First Cisl union in an analysis of the financial statements of the top 5 large Italian banks (Unicredit, Intesa Sanpaolo, Mps, Banco Bpm and Ubi) in the period January-September 2017. The research underlines how the 8 billion profits made have given a decisive contribution was the 14,4 billion in net commissions related to the labor factor.
“Let's stop saying once and for all that the cost of labor is a burden for the banking system - comments the secretary general, Giulio Romani - The real burden is the enormous devaluations demanded by European regulators, with the result that we continue to sell off NPLs that could instead be recovered through their patient management, returning to give income”.
Not only. The positive result of the institutes also benefits from the "527 million drop in personnel costs against a reduction of 7.786 employees in the big five alone - underlines Riccardo Colombani, head of the Research Department of First Cisl - without counting the cuts in the banks acquired by Ubi and Intesa. Together, the net commissions and the lower Cuban personnel costs 15 billion, a figure very close to the 15,7 billion of the total gross operating result. As for labor costs, the figure for the first five groups is 12,6 billion, which compares with an intermediation margin of 36,3 billion".
Profitability burns, continues Colombani, "are the 10,1 billion of loan adjustments, not much below the 10,5 billion of the first 9 months of 2016. By themselves, the provisions on loans eat up a figure higher than the net profit and which is equivalent to 70% of net commissions and 59% of the 17 billion in net interest collected by the banks. If the npls were destined for in-house management by specialized personnel, instead of more or less obligatory sale, and the provisions could be made taking into account the recoveries made, profits would start to grow again, generating employment and economic development".
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