By Valentina Za
MILAN (Reuters) – Thanks to cost-saving investments in technology, Intesa Sanpaolo plans to grow its market share in wealth management without having to make any acquisitions, Chief Executive Carlo Messina said on Tuesday.
Presenting a new digital financial advisory service for private banking customers, weeks after launching the group’s new digital bank for mass-market clients, Messina said Intesa was increasingly acquiring fintech features.
“The next step will be to become aggressive and win market share on wealth management, including for retail customers, without acquiring rivals but instead reducing our cost base over time thanks to our [digital] investments,” he said.
Intesa last month launched Isybank, a cloud-based mobile-only bank powered by Britain’s Thought Machine, which Italy’s biggest lender is targeting at younger customers with digital skills and a need for only basic banking services.
In a similar fashion, Intesa said it was lunching Fideuram Direct, using technology to serve younger and less demanding private banking clients.
Intesa’s business model is focused on insurance and wealth management, which CEO Messina said was not just for affluent customers but also for ordinary households who need to invest their savings and buy non-life insurance products.
Tommaso Corcos, who heads Intesa’s private banking business Fideuram, with 327 billion euros of assets under management (AUMs), told the presentation the new digital service would be run by younger bankers, compared with an average age of 50 or 51 for private bankers.
Cost savings will come not only from the younger age of the new hires but also from the fact that each of them will manage a portfolio of clients which Corcos said would be “a multiple” of a regular private banker’s portfolio.
“We can imagine for example the son of one of our private banking customers as a Fideuram Direct customer,” he said.
Fideuram Direct, the new digital service, has already 60,000 clients and 2.5 billion euros in AUMs, Intesa said.
(Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Alvise Armellini and Keith Weir)
