“Valuing the banking biodiversity promotes growth". She claims it in a note Assopopolari, the association that brings together Italian popular banks, underlining that “in 2020 the community banks US they processed two-thirds of the applications for the SME employment support program against a 15% market share of loans, reporting significant profitability. This was made possible by the policies conducted in recent years by the US authorities aimed at enhancing the role of local and small-sized banks".
In Europe, continues Assopopolari, “only Germany highlighted the same attention to local banks by making national interests prevail over the European banking vision pursued by the ECB which, on the contrary, has influenced the composition of the Italian banking system in recent years, favoring the formation of large banking groups".
The data cited by the Association are contained in an article by Bocconi economist Marco Onado published two days ago by Sun 24 Hours, which highlights "how the balance between some large banks and a substantial number of small banks was accompanied by increased vivacity and efficiency during the pandemic thanks to the ability of local banks to be close, even physically during the lockdown, to families and businesses”, continues the note.
According to Joseph DeLucia Lumeno, general secretary of the National Association of Popular Banks, "the American and German lessons demonstrate that it would now be useful for the economy of the Union, and above all for the Italian one, to definitively acknowledge that biodiversity in the banking system, understood as a balanced presence of large groups and local banks, it must be valued and not penalized precisely in the light of what happens in other evolved credit contexts with obvious benefits for the entire economy”.
