Now that the cooperative credit reform, after that of the popular banks last year, is in the finishing straight, I must express satisfaction in seeing a point on which I also formulated some considerations in this newspaper implemented. Namely that of a way out based on the transfer en bloc of assets and liabilities by one or more BCCs (at least one with assets exceeding 200 million) to a spa bank - to be left under the control of the spin-off cooperatives - and on the preservation of the indivisibility of reserves.
Some doubts remain about the legal basis of the tax, which is high among other things, which accompanies the way out. But I don't think it will be difficult to get over it, also because for the shareholder of a BCC who votes not to join the cooperative group, the convenience will be all the greater the more the composition of the assets is concentrated in the reserves, which will support most of the tax burden, and less in the capital which is the part of its pertinence. It doesn't seem like a paradox, but, other conditions being equal, the more the cooperative nature of the bank has been preserved over time, the more convenient the model of the joint-stock company is now for the shareholder.
The limited time frame for exercising the option and the Bank of Italy's assessment of the sustainability of the exit plans confirm the exceptional nature of this choice, excluding that it is an alternative model to the one identified to strengthen banking cooperatives as a whole . It is only a safeguard for those who believe they are taking a different path, in order to make the most of what they have been able to build up to now. Above all, it must be a conscious choice of financial solidity, with a view to interpreting a new method of territorial banking. This typology, which is so important for the country's economy, has in fact emerged with serious imbalances from the economic crisis and inadequate action to contrast its structural deficiencies.
I also argued for the need to overcome the operational constraints envisaged for the BCCs, due to the size reached by some of them and the possibility of developing growth and risk differentiation policies, without derogating from the characteristics of prudence, according to the scheme recognizable by the market, i.e. that of the joint-stock company.
This solution is mostly ascribed to the proactive action of the Cabel network, as a result of the fruitful dialogue with the cooperative banking movement, with the cooperative banks and with the authorities in the phase preceding the approval of the reform in parliament, in compliance with the principles of cooperation and bearing in mind the cases of transfer of cooperative assets to joint-stock companies successfully tested in sectors other than credit. In the aftermath of the parliamentary passage, this way out method was favorably commented both by the Bank of Italy and by Federcasse.
Where chosen, the path requires significant changes, supported by the aim of greater management efficiency, with renewed decision-making and control processes. They will be essential points of the strategic plans to be brought in support of the requests in the sixty days foreseen for the exercise of the option after the entry into force of the law.
But it will still not be enough, because the projects will derive their credibility not only from the demonstration of the will to expand and differentiate the business (more services, more customer care, more alignment with market trends), but also from the concrete ability to manage costs of production and distribution.
In a context of thinning margins and reduced propensity for credit risk, the recovery of profitability mostly pushes towards rationalization interventions to increase the productivity of the structures and of the labor factor.
With similar efficiency objectives, the outsourcer Cabel has instead given rise, in the same time frame as the institutional reforms, to a strategy of alignment with the main lines of technological development, according to a logic of investment rather than reduction and cuts.
It did so through a partnership agreement, now in its launch phase, with one of the major international operators interested in offering its core banking IT architecture to the Italian market, which is already a standard for the banking industry in many countries.
In this project, the ability to graft the functional requirements of Italian banking onto the technological platform developed according to an innovative combination of hardware and software is vital. Locating an IT system, however advanced and robust, in fact means successfully adapting it to the peculiarities of the reference regulatory context.
This operation, especially in a country like ours characterized by non-secondary specificities in taxation, in reporting to the Authorities, in some types of business and in other fields of operation, will allow the overcoming of barriers to entry which have so far protected domestic suppliers of banking software, but which have also led to some backwardness compared to more advanced developments. These delays have had an impact both on IT costs and on the times required to evolve the bank-customer relationship according to greater flexibility and adaptability of core applications to new and growing needs.
Therefore, for banks, having an IT machine capable of responding "agilely" to market expectations has become an increasingly stringent need. The role of IT, as a driver of innovation and an enabling factor for the creation of new value-added services for customers, is therefore central, both for reducing the workloads of IT departments and optimizing software development times as well as for ensure faster time-to-market of banking products.
The greater economy of management and maintenance of basic applications (registry, current accounts, deposits, mortgages, payments, finance, accounting, etc.) will give a strong acceleration to the automation of processes and the streamlining of back-office activities.
The cooperation between Oracle and Cabel, whose joint press release was also published by this newspaper in recent days, takes the form of co-investment, aiming to make the service-oriented architecture called Oracle Flexcube usable both for the banks that maintain the IT resources at home as well as for those that outsource them.
It could represent a first step to get out of the costly fragmentation of IT systems, on which both the limited investments of recent years and the decision to focus on front-end applications have impacted, to make the IT presentations of the activities more captivating, but also putting secondly, the resolution of inefficiencies connected with the historical back-end systems, including the definitive affirmation of the service logics of the more recent platforms.
The renewal of core applications is also essential for the transition to digital banking centered on the management of customer relationships via mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, for extensive, multi-channel and interoperable banking, centered on response times and quality (in terms of flexibility and security) of the activated functions.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning the growing competition that will be exerted against all banks, whatever their size and institutional form, by the large social platforms and P2P services. These entities, now known as GAFA banks (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), when they decided to move towards the offer of services increasingly similar to banking ones, first and foremost invested massively in their core systems.
Oracle's entry into the Italian IT market also appears to be consistent with the new European framework of the Banking Union (the same single cooperative group in the making will probably be a significant banking intermediary), to get out of the autochthonous solution of the IT components or from models outsourcing consortiums, which, as also emerges from the 2014 report of the Bank for International Settlements entitled "Non banks in retail payments", require important changes.
Joint ventures such as the one described here can therefore positively change the management of operational risks of retail banks, helping their profitability profiles which, together with the issue of loan adjustments, are critical results for many of them at the end of the first supervisory checks only European.
A conclusive synthesis point is that institutional renewal, promoted with the reforms, and technological renewal, also through international collaborations, are two interdependent aspects of the request for transformation of the national banking industry, undoubtedly complex to manage, but , at the same time, can no longer be postponed. The Cabel network intends to actively participate in the promotion of these changes, so that banks, including smaller ones, fully enter the productive context of European banking.
