There is a "diversity" in the panorama of the credit system. This is a positive diversity for the Italian economy and society, it is the peculiarity represented by the popular credit system. The consistency of this system is given by precise results. In an economic situation still marked by the crisis, in the first quarter of 2017, the popular and local banks increased their loans to households and small and medium-sized enterprises to a greater extent than the banking system as a whole. The flow of new loans, in the first three months of the year, was over 7 billion euro for SMEs and almost 4 billion euro for loans to households for the purchase of a house. Confidence in popular credit is also confirmed, and in particular, on the side of savings collection with deposits up by 6%.
These results can be explained by the nature and history of popular credit. The popular ones are not the result of a double entry, they are not the product of an ideology studied and applied at the table, but they are a reality, they are an anthropological and social fact. For some, this peculiarity is considered an Italian specificity. It is not so. On the contrary, popular and cooperative credit is a vital and expanding reality all over the world which counts 200 institutions with 700 million customers and 435 million members; 9 trillion euro collected and 7 thousand loans. A solid reality that has always been rooted, due to its history, in Europe and North America but in rapid and strong expansion in South America and Africa and with a growth in presence in Asia and, particularly, in China.
In this international scenario, the Association of Cooperative Banks represents 52 member banks in Italy; 186 financial and instrumental companies; 250 correspondents in the world; 5.273 branches; 1.028.000 members; 6 million customers; 48 thousand employees; 270 billion of assets. To these numbers must be added requests for membership by international cooperative banks and cooperatives operating on the Italian market, from Japan, Brazil, Thailand and various African countries. An Association that, every day, works for the development of an identity based on cooperation and subsidiarity, for the enhancement of the territories by engaging in social issues and with the primary aim of looking at the impressive innovations of the banking panorama in order to accompany members and customers in a future that looks very complex.
Popular credit, in the long global crisis, has represented a fundamental segment of stability and resilience of the banking system in our country as in other parts of the world. The popular ones are today, and will be tomorrow, still essential to support the future and, as it seems, the next economic recovery, in a system that will necessarily have to find a strong point in biodiversity as it has been up to now and as it is in every part of the world. world that wants to grow and develop. The idea behind popular credit, which in the midst of the industrial revolution was the first and most original ante litteram social network formula anchoring credit and funding to the values of subsidiarity, social security and mutuality, today, in post-industrial society and in the midst of the digital age, is that of knowing how to look to the future thanks to the awareness of having an important history behind one's shoulders.
The story of Enzo Ferrari and Ferrari, one of the best-known Italian excellences in the world, remains in the memory, among a thousand, and more relevant than ever. The "Drake", as he would later be renamed, couldn't find credit to start the story that would become the story of a myth and, after having knocked, in vain, on a thousand doors, he managed to get his first loan from a popular bank, the "Banco San Geminiano e San Prospero" of Modena and Reggio Emilia which agreed to run the risk relying not so much on the assets and capital of the potential debtor, but on his abilities, his ideas. It is Ferrari himself who recounts it in the memoirs collected in 2001 by Pino Casamassima: "To buy the premises, where draft horses were previously located, Ferrari and his lawyer, Enzo Levi, went to Giuseppe Casoli, director of Banco San Geminiano and San Prospero, to ask for a loan of one million lire. Casoli listened in silence while Ferrari talked for about an hour about his plans. When the speech ended, the banker looked at the lawyer and said, 'This young man has told me a fascinating story. What should we do? Shall we give him his million?" The money came quickly. A story of great successes began but above all the common belief that banks only finance those who already have money was denied. The diversity of popular credit is all here.
