(Finance) – The satisfaction of cooperatives and social enterprises with regard to their relationship with banking institutions continues to grow in 2021 (+ 7.1%), especially due to the presence of dedicated staff trained on the needs and specificities third sector organizations (36.6%) and a service model dedicated to these companies (26.2%). Furthermore, the importance for these subjects is increasing not only of a specific product offer, but rather of a strategy that is reflected in the bank’s organizational models. This is what emerges from the XI edition of the Observatory on Finance and the Third Sector presented by Intesa Sanpaolo And AICCON (Italian Association for the Promotion of the Culture of Cooperation and Non-Profit).
The survey also notes how cooperatives and social enterprises increasingly perceive bank as consultant and companion (+ 5%) rather than in the traditional role of credit provider only (-4%). As for theinvestment analysis and coverage of financial needs, the XI edition of the Observatory, unlike in the past, has set itself the goal of concentrating the analysis on the last two years (2020-2021), in order to be able to read any signs of discontinuity with respect to the previous edition and collect ideas on preferences investment of cooperatives and social enterprises during the two-year pandemic.
According to the data collected by the survey, 70% of the subjects interviewed (about 250 social cooperatives and social enterprises srl) made investments in the last 2 years (94% in 2019) and the main source of coverage was theSelf-financing (47.7%) – which are used in particular by mixed type A + B cooperatives (50.7%) and type A cooperatives (49.8%) – followed by loans disbursed by banking institutions (30.4%), a channel which B-type cooperatives have made particular use of in the last two years.
In particular, some elements emerge from a comparative analysis of the last two editions of the Observatory: the recourse to banking resources by cooperatives and social enterprises increases (+ 2%, after a downward trend since 2018) against a decrease in self-financing capacity (-3.8%., after it had marked a positive trend from 2018); greater openness to resources of private investors (+ 1.4%, it had been decreasing steadily since 2018), due to a greater interest in these capital by consortia (7.6%) and social enterprise limited liability companies (18.7 %).
Also there forecast on future investments seems to confirm some of the trends observed in the last two years, namely a greater recourse to bank credit (31.6%; + 4%) – mainly by consortia of cooperatives (50%) – and to the capital of private investors (8, 9%; + 0.8%) – preferred by social enterprises limited liability companies (24.1%) – and less recourse to self-financing (45.8%; -4.6%), a choice that they claim to prefer cooperatives mixed type A + B (55.3%). In continuity with the preferences recorded in the last edition, cooperatives and social enterprises intend to use these resources mainly to enhance their human capital (30.4%) and improve access to technology (20.4%), but also to redesign the services offered (12.4%) and developing new business functions (12%), a symptom of the receptive and reactive capacity of these organizations in response to the changed scenarios.
As for the knowledge of social impact finance tools, the results of the survey reveal a growing familiarity on the part of consortia and srl social enterprises with the issue and more generally an increase in use by the organizations present in the sample (+ 8.9%), growth in particular driven by type A cooperatives (+ 25%) and by cooperative consortia (+ 10.7%). The best known and most used instrument is that of subsidized loans (68.8%), for example the Revolving Fund for enterprises of the MISE, funds with subsidized EIB funding, followed by solidarity bonds (25%) and social venture capitalism instruments. (18.8%).
Additionally, 55.2% of organizations have started paths to measure the social impact of their activities. On this issue, there is a need in terms of training support (in the context of the offer of non-financial services by credit institutions), together with other aspects related, for example, to the construction of new organizational models, to financial education and how to implement crowdfunding campaigns.
For the second consecutive year the Observatory is enriched with theIntesa Sanpaolo Social Enterprise Outlook, aanalysis edited by Ipsos Italia and AICCON, in collaboration and with the patronage of Confcooperative-Federsolidarity and Legacoopsociali, aimed at detecting the sentiment and future development prospects of social enterprises. The survey returns a growing share of social enterprises which during the first months of 2022 increased the number of employees (+ 17% over 2021), improved the economic result (+ 16% over 2021) and the profit margin ( + 9% on 2021). Despite this, it is the growing incidence of production and labor costs and the scarce availability of skilled or experienced labor that worry a growing slice of social enterprises with respect to the near future. The Outlook also offers an increasingly clear view of the trends that will characterize the social enterprises of the future: organizations that are increasingly expanding their range of action – 36% operated in 2022 in new sectors of intervention – and open their own borders by favoring hybridization processes – 78% collaborated with subjects having a legal form different from their own and 50% sought outside competences complementary to those already present internally.
“The last few years – he comments Andrea Lecce, Head of the Impact Department of Intesa Sanpaolo – have been particularly complex and Third Sector organizations have had to rethink their activities to continue to support the social and health needs that have been enormously amplified with the pandemic crisis. Intesa Sanpaolo, through the Impact Department, is strongly committed and structured with a network and dedicated solutions to assist and support it in its sustainable growth projects, in line with the objectives of the PNRR. Thanks to our 600 people specialized and dedicated to the social world, we operate in an innovative way in the area, favoring access to credit for Third Sector organizations with the common goal of benefiting communities and the environment “.
“The transition underway – underlines Paolo Venturi, director of AICCON – pushes the Third Sector towards a more “tailored” and strategic demand for banking services and solutions. A signal to be associated both with the internal transformations of the sector (e.g. reform, digital transformations), and with the pushes for change and investment that come from the context and from the PNRR: A decisive and establishing phase that requires new skills and a transformative vision guided by social impact metrics “.
“In recent years – he says Enzo Risso, scientific director of Ipsos Italia – the cooperative world was not only a succession of Maginot lines of defense but, in a difficult phase like that of the last two years, the projective soul of a way of doing business aimed at people and generating value for everyone (shareholders, employees, companies and communities). Cooperatives should be increasingly judged by credit institutions on the basis of more complex indicators, capable of keeping together the economic indexes and the indicators of impact on the territory and on society of the work in cooperatives “.