(Finance) – Banca Valsabbina, the main cooperative bank of Brescia, has completed the acquisition operation of 100% of the fintech Prestiamoci, a financial intermediary authorized and supervised by the Bank of Italy which has created and developed a digital consumer lending platform ”.
Prestiamoci also controls the payment institution “Pitupay”, therefore representing one of the main and structured Italian players, with over 90 million euros of digital financing provided to private individuals.
Over the years, investments in the company’s capital have followed one another, also through the intervention of new shareholders, as well as on the liquidity collection model necessary to support the increase in financing requests managed by the fintech. In this regard, alongside the “private collection”, which is not sufficient to support the disbursements, Prestiamoci therefore starts the structuring of securitization operations, resorting to the support of institutional investors (including Banca Valsabbina), adopting it – in fact – as main form of funding.
In September 2021, the Brescia bank, which was already supporting the company’s funding, intervened as part of a capital increase, acquiring 9.9% of the same and strengthening industrial and financial synergies.
During 2023, within an evolving and challenging market and regulatory context, an agreement was reached with the Bank to acquire 100% of the capital of the Fintech, with the common objective of continuing the project as best as possible, however, directing the business strategy towards an increasingly efficient, competitive and sustainable model.
Last year, after detailed negotiations, Banca Valsabbina’s investment in Prestiamoci was completed, both through the provision of further capital and through the increase in institutional funding lines, in implementation of a defined and shared synergistic strategic plan , aimed at the efficient development of “digital consumer lending”.
The new company headquarters in Vimodrone has therefore already been inaugurated and made operational, expanding the spaces available to staff also in order to best accommodate future opportunities offered by the market.
In implementation of the defined Plan, the company’s governance was also updated, making transversal and experienced management available to the Prestiamoci Group, which also contributed to the recent evolution of the Bank, as well as being particularly sensitive to innovation and the control system.
The recent meetings of the shareholders of Prestiamoci and Pitupay therefore designated Antonio Beneduce (Deputy General Manager of Banca Valsabbina) in the role of President and Hermes Bianchetti (Acting Deputy General Manager of the Bank) and Enrico Cremonesi (Head of the Business Division) as Directors. Hermes Bianchetti himself, the main creator of the Bank’s innovation and fintech strategy, was also appointed CEO of Prestiamoci and Pitupay.
Again in implementation of the new strategic/commercial lines, taking into account the changed context and the structural changes of the company, it was decided to make its funding model more efficient, favoring the use of forms of institutional financing, while granting the “providers” forms investment alternatives in line with the market. This initiative is of fundamental importance taking into account that only 14% of the loans currently in place have been financed with liquidity from private lenders.