With a net profit that in the 2023 budget is close to 15 million euros thanks to the growth in revenues driven by the interest margin (+67%) and commission income (+23%), the Chestnut Bank 1910, the only mutual bank in the group Cassa Central Banca of Tuscany and leading institute on the Tuscan Tyrrhenian coast, has archived the best balance sheet of its centuries-old history. But he has no intention of stopping. He doesn't hide his satisfaction General director Fabrizio Mannari who comments thus: “We have demonstrated our ability to combine efficiency and the ability to produce income with capital strengthening and the reduction of asset risk and to innovate in the continuity of our special identity, which has its roots in the territory but also in a concept of banking, which distinguishes us from large groups, and which combines the wise use of new technologies with the centrality of the person, both among employees and in relationships with customers".
Over the last 15 years, under the direction of a new generation of managers led by Mannari, Castagneto Banca 1910 has grown visibly, has expanded into Toscana beyond its territory of origin, it has covered its back by entering the Cassa Centrale Banca Group and has ambitious plans which are summed up in the bet on the excellence of the Maremma. Today the bank has over 6 thousand members, 800 of whom arrived in the last year, it has 190 employees with an average age of 43, predominantly female and 24 branches (the latest opened last December in Cascina in the province of Pisa) located in 4 provincial capitals (Livorno, Pisa, Grosseto and Lucca) in an area of 700 thousand inhabitants with significant economic potential. “The 2023 budget results make us proud and reward the commitment and professionalism of the entire bank – explains Mannari – but we consider them a starting point and certainly not an arrival point. The bank has the obligation to look ahead with an eye to the future."
What does this mean exactly?
“It means that we must prepare ourselves for when the ECB reduces rates and the interest margin if the Tuscan economy does not regain the momentum of 2022 and 2023”.
How?
“Combining our traditional commercial activity with our offer of wealth management services and above all insurance and savings management services with the precious consultancy of our Parent Company. The first half of 2024, despite the modest rate cut and those that lie ahead, tells us that we are in a position to replicate last year's performance but we must think about what happens afterwards and adapt the bank's activity more and more and better to the needs of the territory and the market. This is why we are preparing a new industrial plan which aims to support the excellence of the Maremma and the surrounding area but also to expand into the heart of Tuscany".
In what sense do you want to enhance the excellence of the territory?
“Quality agriculture and viticulture, energy and environmental transition also to respond to the new needs of tourism and hospitality in one of the most beautiful areas of Italy, and support for services and sustainable industry. Let's not forget that we serve an area in which there are the Tower of Pisa, the port of Livorno as well as those of Piombino and San Vincenzo, the Carduccian cypresses of Bolgheri, the island of Elba, the Argentario and a beautiful park like that dell'Uccellina in the Grosseto area, not to mention the new opportunities that our presence in Lucca offers us".
Castagneto Banca 1910 has become a partner and financing body of the new energy community of Livorno, which covers the entire southern part of the Labronica province, and has two ambitious projects that will be enhanced in the new industrial plan. The first concerns support for quality viticulture. Historically Castagneto is the bank of great wines that are born in the cellars and in the fertile territories a stone's throw from its headquarters in Donoratico Castagneto Carducci (from Sassicaia of the Marquis Incisa della Rocchetta to the Ornellaia dei Frescobaldi to the wines of the Antinori), but today Mannari's project, which takes shape in the Development Contract for Agriculture, is to encourage the growth of medium-sized quality wineries with subsidized financing and partly non-repayable which can enhance and consolidate a new generation of quality producers. The second project, which crowns the bank's entire development strategy, goes to the heart of Tuscany and aims to open the branches of Castagneto Banca 1910 directly in Florence.
“It is a very challenging project that is also close to Cassa Centrale Banca's heart: we will be ready in 2026 but we are already working on it to present ourselves in the best possible way in the regional capital”.
But this doesn't mean forgetting the origins and there is also a Foundation on the way.
“At a time when the bank extends across a large part of the region, they want to remind the members and the area where everything was born over a century ago that Castagneto Carducci is always in our heart and for this reason we are creating a Foundation cultural and social specifically dedicated to our territory of origin and thus the circle closes".
Ambitious plans and projects, because living on your laurels is not in the cards for this Maremma bank which has grown incessantly and which has a soul that pushes it to always put people at the centre.
