Italy’s banks closed 508 branches in 2024, taking the total number below the 20,000 mark, according to data from the Fiba Foundation reported by the First Cisl trade union on Friday. The report said that almost half of Italy’s municipalities were now without a bank branch.
The recent trend for Italian banks to shut down branches continued in 2024, when 508 closed, taking the total number below the 20,000 mark, according to data from the Fiba Foundation reported by the First Cisl trade union on Friday. The report said that almost half of Italy’s municipalities were now without a bank branch.
For 4 million Italians, the branch is a mirage. The secretary of the CISL banks, Colombani: “Problem for social cohesion, follow the example of Poste”
The risk, underlines the Observatory, is to increase the social exclusion of the population bands and the most fragile territories: a “bank desertification” which derives both from the growth of digital payments (albeit under the European average) and from the economic decline, demographic and social of some areas of our territory.
But it is not only people who suffer the consequences of the abandonment of the territories by banks. “Also for many small businesses” - reads the Observatory report – “The closing of the branches represents a significant problem. A problem that is summarized with two words: Less credit.the purpose of the Observatory is therefore to raise public awareness and political class on the consequences that bank desertification involves for the development of the country and the holding of its social fabric.”
