According to two out of three Italians (66%), the rules and controls that protect savings are not effective and the situation is destined to worsen in the future. This is what emerges from the Acri/Ipsos research carried out on the occasion of World Savings Day.
Compared to 2016, the year affected by the resolution of the four banks in November 2015, the percentage of pessimists decreased and the percentage of those satisfied with the current rules and controls increased, from 26 to 34%. However, compared to last year, the perception of share holders worsens (54% against 50%) while the perception of effective protection for mutual funds becomes the majority.
The share of pessimistic Italians on the protection of savings over the next 5 years is reduced but remains the majority (52% against 67% in 2016) but this does not happen to the detriment of optimists who maintain the same percentage share from one year to the next (19% ).
FOR ITALIANS THE CRISIS IS STILL SERIOUS, 4 YEARS TO GET OUT OF IT
The survey also shows that for Italians the economic crisis is still serious and the prospect is to get out of it definitively only in 4 years. The authors of the research believe that the perception of the crisis is easing and that the proof of this is a greater propensity to consume detected this year, even at the expense of savings.
However, strong differences remain, especially territorial ones: while in the North-West there are the main signs of a return of confidence, in the South they are almost completely absent. Instead, the perception of the role of Europe changes: the Italians of the Ipsos sample, while criticizing the excessive rules of Brussels, manage to understand, more than in the recent past, the positivity of the general picture.
SAVINGS AND INVESTMENTS: ITALIANS IN ORDER, THE BRICK NO LONGER WORKS
As for the relationship between savings and investments, for Italians the ideal investment no longer exists and brick and mortar, even if it is on the rise, no longer has the appeal of the years before the crisis. Three almost homogeneous groups emerge from the responses to the survey. 33% who believe that there really isn't an ideal investment, 31% who indicate real estate and 29% who prefer financial investments deemed safer. From the answers on real estate, however, there is growth for the third year in a row, at 31%. However, this percentage is very far from the peak of 2006 when seven out of ten Italians indicated the brick as an ideal investment.
The Acri/Ipsos research then observes how the number of Italians inclined to save remains extremely high: they are 86% (2016% in 88). However, from the responses there is the observation of a reduction in the anxiety to save compared to the beginning of the crisis. In 2014, 46% of Italians subscribed to the expression "I don't live in peace if I don't save", the following year 42% and today only 37%, the same percentage as in 2016.
Those who believe it is good to make savings without too many sacrifices prevail: (49%, -2 percentage points compared to 2016). After four consecutive years of growth, the share of Italians who claim to have managed to save in the last twelve months decreases: they go from 40% in 2016 to the current 37%, and those who consume all their income increase (41%, they were 34% % in 2016).
GUZZETTI: ITALIANS COME OUT OF A NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION, NOW FOCUS ON YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE SOUTH
According to the president of ACRI, Giuseppe Guzzetti, Italians "are emerging from a negative psychological situation" linked to the long global crisis: the answers of the sample of Italians questioned by Ipsos at the end of September are less gloomy than those of 2016 and there are first signs of confidence recovery. Guzzetti singles out one in particular: "There is no longer the anxiety to save as consumption increases".
At this point, economic policy recipes "must place the South at the centre, and young people in particular given the 60% unemployment rate - continued Gussetti - If the issue is not tackled radically, the country does not have much future".
