Big interview
Following a number of mergers, most recently between Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI in 2007, the contemporary iteration of Intesa Sanpaolo has firm foundations on both sides of the Po Valley. With major offices in both Milan and Turin, and around 4,500 branches, it is one of the most substantial financial institutions on the peninsula. And not only there. From Bank of Alexandria in Egypt to CIB in Hungary, the tentacles of this banking giant have spread in ways that would probably have felt miraculous to the Compagnia di San Paolo. Nor is the institution – now Italy’s biggest bank, with total assets of around €1trn – resting just yet. In October 2021, to give one example, it partnered with Italy’s chamber of commerce to inject €150bn into the country’s Covid-stung economy. As this last scheme implies, the bank has embarked on an ambitious scheme of national investment, supporting start-ups and sustainability with matching gusto. In the same vein, Intesa has begun bolstering its own digital capabilities, finally closing the gap between Mediterranean institutions and their twins across the Alps. Not that any of this is easy. Even before events in Ukraine, the bank’s executives have increasingly been forced to play different roles, bobbing and weaving between roles. And, since the Russian invasion began in February, they have had to become more flexible still, as the bank’s CIO is quickly learning.
Going tip to toe
For a senior executive at one of Europe’s leading banks, Massimo Proverbio really has not been a banker for very long. He actually spent most of his long career at Accenture, finally becoming global senior managing director at the firm’s payment services wing. That eye-catchingly senior title may explain how Proverbio bagged his current position, becoming Intesa Sanpaolo’s chief IT digital and innovation officer in November 2017. Yet even if he has spent less time at an actual bank than some of his peers, it is similarly clear that Proverbio’s 34 years at Accenture nonetheless offered him a piazza-side view of his country’s digital journey. “I remember when I developed the first internet banking solution in Italy,” he says. “It was a tech experiment, a nice cherry on the cake.” That ambling tone is telling. As Proverbio explains, Italy has traditionally lagged behind many of its neighbours in terms of both technological adoption and digitalisation. To this day, the peninsula sits near the bottom of the EU’s Digital Economy and Society Index, slouching behind poorer ex-communist countries like Croatia and Lithuania. This relative weakness is apparent everywhere from the percentage of Italian netizens using e-government services (36%) to the number
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with more than rudimentary digital skills (22%). More to the point, these attitudes have plainly burrowed into the consciousness of Italy’s 580-odd banks. Through the 2000s, Proverbio describes how digital channels were just “at the service” of brick- and-mortar branches, lacking any deeper orchestration or strategy. There is some evidence, too, that issues persist even now. At BPM, Italy’s fourth-largest bank, reviewers continue to grumble that the company app has a range of accessibility problems and that it sometimes goes offline at night.
Like so much else, the pandemic has smashed these cosy arrangements. With Italy imposing one of Europe’s harshest lockdowns, people have been forced to adapt. “The real driver of this change is customer behaviour and expectations,” argues
Massimo Proverbio, chief digital and innovation officer at Intesa Sanpaolo.
“I remember when I developed the first internet banking solution in Italy. It was a tech experiment, a nice cherry on the cake.”
Proverbio, suggesting that from entertainment to e-commerce, a nation of technophobes is being dragged towards digital. This is a fair point: 30% of Italians used digital health platforms during the pandemic, a 20% rise from 2019. Nor are financial services far behind. 2020 saw Italy transact €81.5bn worth of contactless payments, a 29% jump from the year before. With all this activity, it is also unsurprising that Italy’s banks are reacting in kind. In its new 2022–25 business plan, for instance, Intesa is devoting €5bn to technology and growth. For its part, Intesa’s fellow Italian bank, UniCredit, recently rejigged its top team, promising a ‘complete overhaul’ of the bank’s digital agenda.
All roads lead to roam
When it goes live, Isybank has the potential to transform Italian finance. A new digital retail bank 50% owned by Intesa – Mooney, an external joint venture, makes up the other half – it will provide what Proverbio describes as a “state-of-the-art user experience” for the bank’s growing base of tech- savvy Italians. Integrating cloud and AI wizardry from the off, the platform will also offer a sweep of digital sales channels. Nor is Intesa aiming on unveiling Isybank gradually. Rather, Proverbio says it will be “immediately sustainable from the very beginning”, serving four million Intesa customers. From there, the bank hopes to rapidly expand its digital suite, dovetailing DIY online banking with professional advice from financial experts. Given the speed and scale of these developments, you might wonder how any bank – let alone an Italian bank – could manage it. To a certain extent,
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Intesa Sanpaolo
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