by Cristina Casadei
The First Cisl creates an index that summarizes the physical withdrawal of banks from the territories: the South resists. In 2023, 593 branches have already closed. Colombani: «The pace of closures is unsustainable»
3′ of reading
Since the beginning of the year, almost 600 bank branches have been closed, 593, according to First Cisl. “An unsustainable pace”, says the secretary general Riccardo Colombani who considers biodiversity a value. And at the end of the Federcasse meeting, he really underlined how much the territorial supervision of the mutual banks takes place through physical branches.
The new desertification index
The new closures have redrawn the map of banking desertification which sees the South in an overall better condition than the centers of the North, such as Milan for example. According to the Ipd index (provincial index of desertification) of the Fiba Foundation, it is in fact easier to come across a bank branch in Barletta or Grosseto than in Milan or Rome: in short, if you line up a set of indicators such as the total number of branches, the number of municipalities without branches, the resident population, the companies with registered offices and the area on which they are located, the result is that it is not only a question of small towns or mountain areas, but also of large cities. “However, the disengagement of banks from territories is not a uniform phenomenon and holds some surprises,” says Colombani.
The best provinces …
The best provinces in the ranking are scattered between Southern and Central Italy: the first score went to Barletta-Andria-Trani and Brindisi, in Puglia, Grosseto and Pisa, in Tuscany, Ravenna and Reggio Emilia, in Emilia Romagna, and Ragusa, in Sicily. “In these seven provinces, no municipality is left without bank branches,” says Colombani.
On the second step are Bari and Livorno. Mantua is in third place, followed by Siena and Venice and then by Modena.
And Milan, Rome Naples where are they? Much lower. In fact, it is necessary to scroll about ten more positions to find Milan, in 16th position. To get to Rome, which is in 34th place, there are about thirty positions to scroll through, while Naples arrives in 41st.
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… and the worst provinces
In the last positions are found above all the provinces of Calabria and Molise: in the last place, paired, ViboValentia and Isernia, preceded by Campobasso and Cosenza. Rieti, in Lazio, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, in Piedmont, Aosta, Avellino, in Campania, Reggio Calabria and Catanzaro, in Calabria are in the top ten of the most deserted provinces
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The closures of 2023
In the first half of 2023, Italian banks continued to reduce their physical presence in the territories, so much so that 593 branches were closed. The “desertified” municipalities, i.e. without branches, increased by 2.9%. At the same time, the number of people living in municipalities without bank branches is also increasing: today there are 4.2 million in total, after 270 thousand were added in the first half of the year. As well as businesses. Marche, Lombardy, Sicily, Lazio, Umbria and Veneto are the regions where desertification is progressing fastest. In his analysis, Colombani explains that «bank desertification has affected the Italian provinces in very different ways. Within the same regions there are marked differences, while the big cities, contrary to expectations, are all out of the top positions. Furthermore, some provinces in the South, despite the flight of the big banks, show surprising resilience and are installed at the top of the rankings. In general, the realities that occupy the first places are characterized by the roots of small banks, which with the rise in interest rates see their business model centered on territoriality and the provision of credit rewarded. A confirmation that bank biodiversity is not a cost, but an asset».
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2023-07-22 08:01:04
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