MILANO – CEO Matteo Del Fante refers to the government on the privatization of Poste. “The decision to sell is a prerogative of the shareholder and not of management. Next Wednesday the company will release the five-year plan, 2024-2028, to all institutions and investors,” he said at a hearing at the House Transportation Committee on the privatization of the company, answering questions from parliamentarians. “It is a Plan that does not talk about privatizations or second shares, but is the company’s Plan regardless”, he underlined.
Del Fante then reeled off the numbers on the company. “Since this board of directors took office in 2017, our presence in the area has remained intact. We still have 13 thousand post offices”. “In the last year – he recalled – we have delivered 256 million parcels, through a fleet of 30 thousand vehicles. Today we have 30 million payment cards issued and we manage Italians’ savings of 580 billion. In the insurance sector, again in 2023, we have raised 18 billion gross. We are the first identity providers within Spid”.
“We have a direct and indirect impact measurable over the 2018-2023 period in 65 billion, through our purchasing and investment activity, but also through the salaries that the company pays”, underlined Del Fante.
Poste returns the correspondence to active. Revenues rise to 12 billion, record operating result
First investor in government bonds
Among other data, Del Fante recalled the growth in the insurance sector with “the placement of savings policies, reaching approximately 160 billion in reserves, therefore in savings of invested Italians”. “We are by far the leading investor in Italian government bonds. We invest the resources on the deposits and active current accounts that we have with Italians in government bonds, as well as the proceeds of the policies that we place, for an amount of 140 billion EUR”. “The area that has grown the most has been payments. With our prepaid cards we are important players in the growth of this market,” he said.
Positive margins on everything except postal products
“The margins are substantially positive on everything that is not postal, we are doing very well in terms of operating margin on insurance, on banking, on payments. But the area where the company continues to lose money is that of post, because our The country is much further ahead in the process of replacing paper in electronic invoices, in the use of email for communications, compared to the European average. Therefore today an Italian receives correspondence substantially every 10 days: we have 35 items per capita per year for Italian.So Poste must maintain a network of around 50 thousand people between sorting and postmen to deliver a letter, or a bill every 10 days, having a revenue of 1 euro.
“First 10 passports delivered”
Del Fante also spoke about the new experimental Poste service which allows the delivery of passports. “We delivered the first 10 pilot passports in two municipalities in the Bologna area. Nine were delivered at home, one person came to collect it at the post office”, said Del fante, explaining that the processing time is around 15 days. Del Fante added that the company is not “late on the Polis service.”
The manager also spoke on the sale of PagoPa to Poligrafico and Poste anticipated in recent days by Republic. “We have heard different things in recent days. There is a law provision that speaks of a majority shareholder, Poligrafico, 100% owned by the State, and therefore perhaps the question should be asked directly to Poligrafico” however “we can guarantee data confidentiality to the market”, he said, recalling that Poste Italiane has managed 1 billion transactions on Spid, and “no one has ever raised the issue of confidentiality”.
“We want to give another example: we have been working with banks together for more than 20 years. By law we cannot distribute, provide credit, make loans, but since 2002 we have been distributing loans from financial institutions, so one of our customers who enters the post office and wants a consumer loan, we analyze it, then we take the customer and pass him to the bank. We have carried out 48 billion transactions, and 4 million Italians have benefited from our territorial presence. In that case we should have the problem of confidentiality” but “In 22 years we have never had the slightest problem.”
Compared to Paga Pa, this “is a payment circuit on which we are based in 409 service providers” and “there is no interest by definition, whoever is the owner of that circuit, in minimizing the scope of the payment circuit itself “.
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– 2024-03-14 20:30:24
