The implementation of the CCB reform will not be simple. It is in fact a provision imposed from above, the elaboration of which was not characterized by the involvement of the banks considered, which accepted it obtorto collo. It should therefore come as no surprise that attitudes that are not always positive and collaborative on the part of a segment of the BCC world which is currently not clear from a qualitative or quantitative point of view. This is not surprising at all and, moreover, follows what has just happened in the cooperative banking sector, the reform of which is having a decidedly less heavy impact than the one that the reform of the mutual banks will have.
However, the main difficulties that the application of the latter will encounter are other and concern the fact that it intervenes in a moment of particular financial and economic weakness of the system as a whole, of the two groups into which they could merge and of many individual banks who will affiliate with one or the other of them.
The transformation of a mutual system, with characteristics that are not always in line with those required for successful entry into a free and competitive banking market, will force the mutual banks to review their mission and their business model and this will not be easy. It is therefore difficult to predict, on the one hand, how they will be able (or will want) to manage this change and, on the other hand, how the financial and banking market as a whole and the mutual banks' customers will behave towards the same change.
The problem can be tackled and resolved more or less brilliantly depending on the way in which the heads of the system, of the parent companies and of the individual BCCs want and know how to accompany and manage this change, which moreover fits into an environment in which it is now clearly in act not the typical evolution of past years, but a real revolution that will last for quite a while.
In order to face this revolution with the possibility of success, highly professional people will be needed, with an open mind and a strong sensitivity to ethical problems, understood in the broadest sense of the term, who will have to have a long-term vision, the only horizon for which the CBs should aim if they wanted to continue, albeit in new ways, an ultra-secular tradition that has long produced results of great importance.
In addition to people, whose professionalism must be generally recognized and must also have characteristics that are not entirely identical to those of traditional bankers, more substantial assets will also be needed. They will have to be found by the parent companies both by drawing on the currently free capital of a multitude of individual mutual banks affiliated with them, and by accessing the financial market. The more or less important success of the increases in capital resources will be conditioned by the ability of the parent companies and their individual subsidiaries to convince the financial markets of the validity of the new missions entrusted to them and above all by their estimated ability to generate income. This capability is especially necessary for the CBs to produce adequate self-financing flows to continue distributing dividends and to make the classic disbursements in favor of the area in which they operate. The parent companies will need the contribution of the financial market more, which will evaluate the investment in their shares (as is the case for any other company) precisely on the basis of their performance, obviously dependent on the ability to generate adequate income in the medium-long term, to disburse acceptable dividends and to allow for an increase in the value of the company's assets and that of the individual shares that represent it.
The fate of the battle of our new edition cooperative system will therefore depend on its ability (repeated both at a central and peripheral level) to organize and deeply restructure itself to face the challenges it faces. The ways to overcome these challenges are known. In fact, they are the same ones followed by all the banks which, in Italy but above all abroad, have been able both to cope with the general economic and financial crisis without suffering substantial damages or even assuming stronger market positions than before at least in relative terms, excelling towards competitors, both by modifying the corporate structures and the related functioning, putting the crisis behind them and opening new horizons in the market itself. In this sense there is really nothing new to discover. It is enough to study and know the problem and to tackle it decisively and promptly, taking into account the new characteristics that the world of mutual banks will have to take on, which should continue to be different from banks of other types.
Attachments: Reflections on BCC
