We went through the great crisis without any Italian bank failing, being bailed out by the state or costing Italian taxpayers a penny. And it was no accident. This is due to the quality of the governance of the banks, to the supervision by the Bank of Italy, to the quality of their assets, for the most part linked to real values of the economy, and also to the expertise of those who previously managed them.
Of course everyone can improve. Italian banks are working to overcome some communication limitations. We have commissioned a very thorough survey to understand what are the main reasons for possible misunderstanding between the Italian people and the banks. Today we live in a great contradiction: customers' assessment of their bank is largely positive, but if we ask more generally what people think of banks, their assessments are no longer so positive. There are various underlying reasons for this state of affairs, but the fact must certainly be understood and addressed.
There is also a lack of knowledge. For this reason, the next step will be to bring the banks to the Italian squares to present them, to make them better known. The goal is to clarify directly to customers what a bank does, how it works, how it earns, what an interest rate is, what a commission and a transfer are. And again: what is the technological capacity necessary for a bank to operate, how many normal operations are carried out in a day, in a month, in a year.
We have to work on the future in a positive way. We must inevitably commit ourselves, but I think we have already done a part of the way. Efficiency is determined. We are working to be more transparent, more efficient, clearer. The customer must understand what he buys and how much he spends. But then the service given must be paid for. In this path it may be useful to reason more by facts than by prejudicial elements. This also allows the banks to correct what needs to be corrected and therefore to improve the quality of our service which remains essential in the country to support the economic system and its cycle.
It is precisely this link with the real economy that is why our earnings are not so brilliant, while those of others who deal with speculative finance are starting to be too much so.
* President Abi
