The official launch of YouLounge – The Trade Club, the first Italian business community annexed to the prestigious Trade Club Alliance, the international initiative promoted by Banco Santander, was held in Banco BPM's Sala delle Colonne. Fabio de Rosa, Banco BPM's Head of Foreign Affairs and Trade Finance opened the meeting, underlining how “Banco BPM is the first and, at the moment, the only Italian bank part of the Trade Club Alliance” and how, thanks to this agreement, “it is possible to provide our client companies with an innovative tool to expand their business network beyond national borders”.
YouLounge is a digital web platform through which Banco BPM customers can offer their products and services to all members of the community. By drafting a business card that shows the salient elements of the company, client companies have the opportunity to promote their business in the virtual showcase and receive messages able to stimulate B2B contacts with other members of the communitynationally and beyond. Furthermore, thanks to the extensive network of international banks belonging to the Trade Club Alliance, YouLounge offers companies the opportunity to develop their business through specific events organized in various countries for particular industries and product categories.
Two representatives of Banco Santander then intervened and presented the network, illustrating its specific features, capillarity and development prospects. “We are very pleased that Banco BPM is part of the Trade Club Alliance – he recalled Jose Miguel Alonso de Ozalla, Head of Santander Large Corporates Spain – It is a bank with a strong service vocation in favor of SMEs and Mid Caps, a central and significant target for our initiative”.
“The Trade Club Alliance currently brings together 13 international banking groups representing 50 countries; Europe is 90% covered. Currently 15 corporate clients are involved, but the network is booming: we expect over 100 by 2020” – continued Jon Barañano Gaviña, Banco Santander Corporate Business Development Director and Chairman of the Trade Club Alliance. Then followed the interventions of the representatives of the two international banks present at the meeting, KBC Bank Belgium and Siam Commercial Bank, who testified to their experience and the value of the partnership.
They closed the works Maurizio Faroni and Luca Manzoni, respectively General Manager and Corporate Manager of Banco BPM. “With this initiative – said Manzoni – we can offer our client companies technologically advanced consultancy and services, useful for the development of activities related to import and export”. “Banco Bpm, the third national banking group, has become in many areas an essential partner of companies in credit and extraordinary finance, as well as an increasingly effective support for internationalization – concludes Faroni -. With the YouLounge platform, we not only offer an exclusive new virtual environment in Italy in which the company creates its showcase towards the world, but we also allow our customers to interact with a potential community of tens of thousands of companies in many countries ”.
