(Finance) – “Iccrea ended 2022 with even better growth than in previous years, confirming the path started three years ago. The increase in interest rates weighs on business investment and demand, but as an Iccrea group we continue to increase loans and we plan to continue to make them grow over the next three years as well. We have no signs of slowing down. We will obviously continue to select deserving businesses and households”. That’s what he said Mauro Pastore, general manager of Iccrea Banca, parent company of the Iccrea Cooperative Banking Group to sidelines of the Assiom Forex congress.
About the next ones stress tests announced by the EBA as the strictest this year, Pastore said that the “group has what it takes” and arrives “with a significant capital add-on” that allows it to face the negative scenarios drawn by the stress test with serenity.
Iccrea will choose the partner for bancassurance within the year. “The agreement with Generali expired at the end of 2022 – said the managing director of Iccrea Banca – we have opened the tender and in the second half we will have the short list. We’ll see if it will be one partner or two. There is a lot of interest for us, we have 2400 branches throughout Italy”.
Despite the cyclical slowdown, the main indicators of the state of health of the Italian banking system remain overall positive. What do you foresee for 2023?
“We believe that 2023 could be a year of moderate satisfaction because the worries we all had, two or three months ago, are a little less at the moment. We therefore count on inflation to go down in 2023 thus restoring spending capacity to households and businesses and of course the possibility of repaying debts. The banking system will therefore be able to continue to support the economy and at the same time make the right margins to allow for further strengthening of the sector”.
Today here at Assiom Forex 2023 there is optimism. Is it too early to talk about a trend reversal?
“Well yes, maybe it’s a bit early to talk about a trend reversal. However, if a few months ago we had more worries, now
we hope that there are no major changes on current expectations and therefore that the energy issue does not worsen, that war issues do not worsen and that inflation will drop: at this point a recovery path is upon us”.