Milan Business Forum gets to grips with change
SWIFT highlights new opportunities to automate
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Members of the Italian SWIFT community spent a day together exploring in detail the challenges and opportunities they and their customers face in the present business environment at the first ever SWIFT Business Forum in Milan on 11 November.
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Welcoming participants to the event, Isabelle Olivier, Head of SWIFT Italy, noted that the changing economic landscape requires the industry to rethink its existing business models and renew its focus on cost reduction, interoperability and innovative services. Accordingly, the theme for this year’s event was: ‘The Italian financial sector in a changing landscape: opportunities or threats?’ Through a series of plenary sessions, panel discussions and workshops, the Forum examined both current trends and challenges and what SWIFT is doing to support the local Italian community.
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Many of the high-level issues confronting the community were set out in the first plenary session on the future of Italian transaction banks in an evolving landscape. Moderated by Giacomo Ferrari, Economic Journalist at Italian daily, Il Corriere della Sera, the discussion brought together Marco Bolgiani, Head of Global Transaction Banking, Unicredit, Giorgio Ferrero, Head of Payment Systems Development and Strategy, Intesa Sanpaolo Group Services, Domenico Santececca, Vice General Director, ICBPI and Alain Raes, Chief Executive Europe, Middle East and Africa, SWIFT to examine how European harmonisation efforts and the recent crisis have together reshaped the operating landscape of Italian banks.
Raes identified three main factors that continue to have a profound impact on the European financial services industry as a whole: damaged balance sheets and a consequent shortage of liquidity; a loss of confidence in financial institutions from customers, regulators and colleagues; and a redefinition of the landscape in terms of players, competitors and new entrants. “Banks, wherever they are, are still busy rebuilding their balance sheets and you the huge fluctuations in their stock price proves that the job is not finished yet,” he observed. “However,” he added, I think we can all agree that the liquidity crisis is over. Central banks having injected massive amounts of liquidity onto the markets.” Loss of confidence is a bigger issue, Raes suggested, as it is a catalyst for greater regulatory intervention that is not necessarily coordinated at a global level.
Raes was optimistic about the role of innovation in reshaping the landscape. He pointed to examples of ways that new players are delivering services to customers, including Mediolanum in Italy, which has virtually no physical branches. “The opportunity for new players is that they have virtually zero legacy and can rapidly use innovation and technology,” he commented.
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SWIFT’s strategy to help the Italian community leverage these trends to their benefit and that of their customers was set out in a subsequent session by Giorgio Ferrero, Intesa Sanpaolo Group Services and SWIFT Italian Board member, and Javier Perez Tasso, Head of Western Europe Middle East and Africa, SWIFT. This session aroused particular interest with copies of the session slides being frequently requested in delegate feedback.
Funds
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The afternoon of the event was given over to parallel sessions on European market infrastructures and corporate banking on the one hand and developments in the funds industry on the other. Progress in automation and standardisation in the European funds industry as a whole was outlined by Marco Attilio, Lead Business Consultant, SWIFT, while David Sabatini, Responsabile Settore Finanza, ABI and Manuela Mazzoleni, Responsabile Relazioni Internazionali, Assogestioni, shared their own experience from an Italian perspective. This was followed by a roundtable on the evolution of the Italian funds industry.
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Feedback on the event was enthusiastic and there was huge support for it to become a regular feature in the annual community calendar. “I participated with great interest in the sessions on the Italian investment funds industry,” said Giovanni Pirovano, President, Mediolanum Gestione Fondi SGR. “The presentations were well organised and provided covered 360° coverage of the issues that concern this important sector that is too often neglected by Italian banks.”
“It was a very interesting event with highly professional content,” commented Domenico Santececca, of ICBPI, a speaker in the morning plenary. “I am confident we will be able to cooperate even more in the future.”
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