Banca Generali

In this video Q&A session, Giorgio Girelli, chief executive officer of Banca Generali, discusses the company's strategy and business model. He also comments on how the bank is adapting to a changing environment in personal financial services.

« The changes were in fact very deep. The bank was born in ’98 as a purely online bank, but we realised in 2000 that this sort of strategy was not so successful. The bank was transformed into a multi-channel bank where the core channel of the bank became the financial advisors and the private bankers. That was a new, absolutely new, strategic model that the bank carried over until now, for the latest eight years. This as a matter of fact this is the strategic model that now is adapted and through which the bank was listed in ’06 ».

« The strategic plan of Banca Generali was presented to the market a few months after the listing. We presented it in March ’07 and the listing happened in November ’06. We felt that was compulsory to present to the market a sound and a very deep strategic plan. The main contents are very simple: we think that the main activity for us will be giving a real advisory to the clients through a very large platform of products and through very skilled and professional advisors. We presented to the market also the results of the full year ’07 and in this occasion we confirmed the targets that we presented in the strategic plan 2007-09. We felt it was convenient to make this choice and to confirm the target – even though in a very much more difficult environment – but we think we have such large opportunities and such large strength inside the bank that it allows us to be very confident in reaching the strategic targets presented in the beginning ’07 ».

« The so-called open architecture was a strategic choice taken by the bank many years ago in 2003. I think that Italy is the country all over Europe where open architecture is still late – it’s the only country. We think that for being able to provide a real advice to the client you need to offer them the best products in the world. We see that the clients are more and more demanding such an offer. We made that choice since many years and now the open architecture is very well working. We are a very glad, satisfied. Banca Generali has its internal product development of managed savings and our products have to be very competitive with third parties. This is a challenge for our asset managers. They need to be very well performing to be able to be competitive towards our network and towards our clients. Then we see that the regulators are more and more pushing the banks and the financial service providers to offer to the client all the products in the world, in managed savings. We see that in Italy this is definitely the choice taken by regulators. We have very glad to have been first movers in this and we think to have the real first-mover advantage ».

« To ensure the best level of financial advice is the life of Banca Generali. So I think everything that we do is centered around this goal. So we have many ways to do it – both the traditional training and all the technical platforms that we can give to our advisors. I think that Banca Generali was very clever in its history to provide financial advice to the clients. This is proved by the fact that we have many clients that have been clients since for example ’86; we have many clients that became clients of Prime – that was one of the companies merged with Banca Generali – and they are clients since ’86 or ’87, so of course without a real financial advice they should have not being clients until now. So I think that the bank is excellent in this and everything that we do is in this direction ».

« MiFID is a very important new legislation and it is coming from Europe. We are very proud to say that many of the things that Banca Generali launched in the past years are already in the direction settled by MiFID. One for all the open architecture: MiFID is encouraging financial providers to offer the best products in the world. As a matter of fact MiFID is encouraging advice and is trying to make a precise definition of what is advice.
For us the adoption of MiFID was tough because we had to see very deeply all our procedures and processes. We did it; it was not so easy but we think that was a matter of fact now we are fully compliant with MiFID and we think that MiFID can be one of the most important issues for the development of a bank like Banca Generali».

« Private banking has always been one of the main areas of strategic development of the company. We bought some years ago – two years ago – we bought Banca Bsi Italy from BSI SA, which is fully controlled by Assicurazioni Generali, it become the pole for private banking for Banca Generali. Now Banca Bsi Italy manages about 7 billion euros of assets under management, out of the 24 (billion euros) of the Banca Generali group. Through the acquisition of Banca del Gottardo Italia we wanted to reinforce, to strengthen our strategy and our development in private banking. We think that we did a good deal, which was appreciated by the market, also because I think that it was made at a good price. For the future we always said that we are interested to grow by external lines and we would like to go on – of course, if we find convenient deals at good prices.
Private banking is and will be for sure one of the most strategic areas of development of the bank ».