From strengthening anti-money laundering to the digital euro and cyber resilience, from financial education to ecological transition and organizational efficiency. These are the objectives that the Bank of Italy will carry on with his strategic plan 2023-2025, introduced by the governor Ignazio Visco in his last year of mandate.
Bankitalia: the 2023-2025 strategic plan
It is a plan strongly anchored to reality, which takes into account all the unknowns of the present that make the economic prospects “less favourable and clear". Not surprisingly, the Governor Ignazio Visco recalls the difficult international scenario for the war in Ukraine which increases the challenges of economic policy "even in a country like Italy, put in difficulty by the pandemic crisis and already overwhelmed by two decades of unsatisfactory growth and a high level of public debt". The number one of Bankitalia also speaks of the "upward pressures of the energy cost and the tensions in the availability of relatives supplies have weighed down the accounts of businesses and households, especially the weaker ones, and rekindled the inflationary pressures, to the contrast of which monetary policy had to devote itself”. All this has made evident the breadth of the challenges - technological, social and economic - inherent in the energy transition, however unavoidable in the light of the climate changes in place, and source, in the same way as the developments of digital technologies, of profound processes of change, with new opportunities and new risks”.
In this context, the plan therefore establishes "the objectives and actions that the Bank intends to undertake to best carry out its institutional mission, encouraging the reallocation of resources on strategic priorities and the pursuit of organizational and management improvements, necessary to ensure efficiency" .
The 5 strategic objectives of the Bank of Italy
“We will continue to work for a stable and secure financial system; we will promote more strongly innovation in the economic and financial field in Italy and in Europe; we will strengthen the protection of customers of banking and financial services; we will dialogue with the outside world in an ever more direct and open to listening way; we will operate, within the limits of our functions, with the aim of promoting energy transition and safeguard the environment”, summarizes the governor Ignazio Visco in the presentation letter of the strategic plan.
The Bank of Italy has in fact fixed 5 strategic objectives:
- enhance efforts for a stable and secure financial system;
- more vigorously promote innovation in the economic and financial field in Italy and abroad
Europe; - strengthen the protection of customers of banking and financial services and dialogue with the outside world in an ever more direct and open to listening manner;
- favor the energy and environmental transition;
- make the organization increasingly inclusive, efficient and capable of innovating.
Stable and secure financial system
To make the financial system more stable and secure, the Bank of Italy intends to “increase the system resilience of intermediaries with actions aimed at monitoring the impacts of the current and prospective context, updating the rules and the tools vigilance, stimulate the financial system to adjust to the challenges posed by the'innovation”. It is also planned to “boost the digitization of the financial system by promoting a innovative payments market, efficient and safe”, to “strengthen the action of money laundering”, of “strengthen the cyber resilience of the Italian financial system and the security of infrastructures and payments in the digital dimension".
Financial innovation in Italy and Europe
The second objective requires the Bank of Italy to play an ever more central role in economic and financial innovation, both in Europe and in Italy. For this reason, "he is now working intensely on an important new European project, which could bring great benefits to the economy and society, relating to thedigital euro, i.e. electronic money issued by the central bank and secure for citizens". Palazzo Koch then speaks of a “similar in the field of statistics” with two projects on the harmonization of statistics of the European System of Central Banks (Integrated Reporting Framework) and one (Banks' Integrated Reporting Dictionary) on European supervision and resolution statistics. On a national level, Bankitalia “is investing energies to strengthen its management functions economic analysis” and intends to “enhance its presence in the area”.
Customer protection
To achieve the third objective, which envisages strengthening the protection of customers of banking and financial services, via Nazionale recalls its commitment to "initiatives of financial education, with particular attention to the most fragile categories" and communicates that "particular attention will be paid so that the digitization of financial and payment services, which can bring great benefits to the economy, does not instead translate into an additional source of risks for consumers ”.
Ecological and energy transition
The commitment to the ecological and energy transition will be "a distinctive feature of the new plan". The goal is “to direct investments towards the most sustainable” urging "the financial system to increase its resilience to the risks associated with climate change and the energy transition". The definition of “a long-term program for zero their emissions net of greenhouse gases” through the efficiency of the structures, the drive towards the self-production of renewable energy and the adoption of sustainable mobility solutions for home-office and work travel.
Organization
The ultimate goal set by the plan is to make the organization “more and more efficient, able to promptly and flexibly reallocate resources on current priorities; capable of innovating, making the most of the potential of the new hybrid working model introduced in April 2022, of new technologies and artificial intelligence; open and inclusive, respectful of the diversity and uniqueness of people, who have always been the most important capital of the Bank; attentive to the management of new risks”.
Visco, in the presentation of the strategic plan underlines that the goal is to make the bank an organization that "in pursuing its institutional mandate, is capable of innovating and reacting to changing external circumstances in an increasingly flexible way. The Governor recalls what he did in the difficult months of the lockdown. “We have already demonstrated, during the pandemic, that we are able to rapidly experiment, learn and transform our organization.” The plan – adds Visco – wants value people who work in the Bank and who are our most important capital. We intend to further strengthen their skills and accountability towards the Bank's institutional tasks, giving our action an even stronger focus on results and greater attention to costs".
