Thursday 10 July Directa, a secured intermediation company listed on the Milan stock exchange and owned by the Turin financier Massimo Segre, had to communicate to the market that the Turin Prosecutor had asked for the indictment for 17 people for the crimes of banking and false abusiveness in the budget.
According to the prosecutors, the “professor”, as he loves to be called Segre, together with his managers would have administered about 300 million euros per year of institutional customers to finance other credit institutions in difficulty, with interest rates higher than those paid to depositors. In short, he would have practically replaced the Bank of Italy In confidentially, small banks in difficulty.
Directa rejects any charge, confides in the possibility of demonstrating one’s own correctness and it is just appropriate to remember that in a civilized country the suspects are all innocent up to the third degree of judgment.
The coincidence: educate while investigated
In the same hours, irony of fate, in Piazza Affari the same Directa celebrated yet another day of meetings with customers and investors dedicated to “financial education”. A fashion, now.
This same financial education that is now becoming one of the saving missions (for peripheral and organic locations) of the Bank of Italy, struggling with the emptying of the powers due to the passage of many functions to the ECB.
The origin: from banking crash to school
Invented about ten years ago, at the time of the banking crashes such as that of the Popolare di Vicenza, Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Veneto Banca, financial education is a virtuous and meritorious discipline.
Especially if entrusted to via Nazionale and the Ministry of Education, which have the right skills and are not in conflict of interest, or with the wardrobes full of skeletons. But financial education has also become a marketing tool.
Original sin: to re -educate savers
The problem is that he brings behind an original sin, that is, having been born in the times of the center -left governments and the “Party of the Banks” Pd, of a Bankitalia who needed the Inspections as an Frankfurt to understand that some renowned bankers present in the front row at its annual assembly were only prestigious. In the midst of crises and judicial investigations, with Ignazio Visco at the helm of via Nazionale and Pier Carlo Padoan at the Treasury passed the concept that the savers and not the bankers had to be re -educated.
A necessity, but also a system strategy
However, it is difficult to deny that Italians need a greater awareness of what are the basic notions of the economy and financial products, especially in an era in which banks and other financial intermediaries have become supermarkets that sell anything.
Bankitalia, ECB, Consob and the ABI itself, the association of banks, control that the offer of financial products is correct and transparent, but it is better to go to the prepared counter and learn the first rudiments of finance already at school.
It should be done in the context of civic education, because it is really difficult to evaluate a government or the program of a party if it is not known how inflation work, purchasing power, budget law, labor market or social security system.
Bankitalia changes skin: goodbye vigilance, welcome training
If the initiatives by individual banks, as of various bodies, are meritorious, less known is that financial education has been changing Bankitalia’s face, which for years has been looking for a new centrality and is well aware that a simple study office cannot remain, at least with these organic people of 7 thousand people, over half of which (55 percent) managers.
According to the Panorama, in the last days of June in Bankitalia a competition has been launched dedicated to replenishing and revitalizing all the structures of the territorial network. The reorganization wanted by the governor Fabio Panetta moves the center of gravity from the “prudential supervision” (supervisory controls) to the “protection supervision” (financial education).
New structures, internal courses and external competitions
Thus, 39 structures are suppressed and 37 of new ones are created, in order to avoid trauma to those who play the role of head division and substitute, all with the blessing of the internal unions and with the promise to also make a competition to take from the outside.
To do what? According to critics of the internal reorganization, we are “inventing” a new future, partly also with tasks of little use for citizens, but of the exclusive interest of the system. The first figures circulating speak of 10-20 employees for peripheral headquarters (37), plus 150-200 in Rome and 50 in Milan.
Training and re-orientation for excess employees
Meanwhile, from July the internal “re-orientation” courses have been open for registration, among which the financial education stands out, precisely for the staff of the “most impactful” branches.
It means that Bankitalia officials who risk losing their jobs will be diverted to financial education, which for months has seen the technicians of via Nazionale beat dozens of high schools and middle schools in the various provinces.
The soft landing of the new educational mission
In short, financial education becomes the soft landing of a bank of Italy in a vocation crisis. The 21 regional branches are saved in the internal reorganization plan. Prudential vigilance will be concentrated in Bologna, Bolzano, Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin and Venice. In these eight branches and in three other (Bari, Catanzaro and Palermo) the contrast to recycling will also be carried out.
Then there are 9 other locations (Agrigento, Catania, Forlì, Lecce, Pescara, Reggio Calabria, Salerno, Sassari, Verona) who “will focus on cash management and information services and will also contribute to economic analysis and financial education activities”.
A strategy already announced by Panetta
Bankitalia has been forward -looking. On 31 October, at the day of savings of the ACRI (savings boxes), the governor explained that we must “operate to increase the skills of citizens in the economic and financial field, strengthening their ability to make prudent investment choices”.
A widespread action, from the poor to the fourteen year olds
And it is no coincidence that via Nazionale now reaches over 150 thousand between students, small entrepreneurs and categories “socially and economically vulnerable”, which is the way in which financial education calls the poor (5.6 million in Italy).
Bankitalia works in close agreement with the Ministry of Education, led by Giuseppe Valditara, and forms hundreds of teachers today, who will then argue this knowledge to students. But also to migrants, elderly people and people in difficulty.
Financial inclusion and the fight against disintermediation
Because in addition to education, there is the problem of the so -called financial inclusion. That is, of the other side of the real nightmare of the banks: disappointment. It is no coincidence that financial education activities also concern the warning from cryptocurrencies and all that gray area of digital finance that takes millions of customers to banks all over the world.
A fourteen year old today, a account holder tomorrow
From this point of view, teaching a fourteen year old as a current account also means guaranteeing a future customer to the banking system.
In addition, financial education is very strong in newspapers and TVs (there are various partnerships with large editorial groups such as RCS Mediagroup and Rai), which also polishes the reputation of the sponsors and involves dozens of journalists.
Magda Bianco, the face of financial education
At the helm of the Customer Protection and Financial Education Department, there has been a woman for years, Magda Bianco.
Bergamasca, 65 years old and a PhD in economics at the London School of Economics, Bianco entered via Nazionale in 1989 and today he is also a consultant to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, for economic policy.
Very Catholic, like his mentor Annamaria Tarantola (former deputy director Bankitalia and President Rai from 2012 to 2015), was president of the Women’s Association of the Bank of Italy and coordinator of the Equal Opportunities Commission.
The real knot: opaque products
His task is important, but he must also take into account what was claimed in 2016 Salvatore Rossi, at the time general manager of via Nazionale, who at the Trento economy festival admitted: “I have a concern about the protection of savings that in Italy is weaker than other countries, in part dependent on the fact that there has been an inclination to offer opaque products”.
Conclusion: Educating, yes. But also not sell smoke
Financial education is a Win-Win operation. Indeed, Win-Win-Win because it is good for citizens, to credit institutions and Bankitalia. The best protection, however, is always to not sell “opaque products”. Especially before climbing the chair.
