Peoplerise’s in-depth analysis continues to encourage a discussion between different actors, in order to find new elements of contact on how banks can change. After the interview with Katrin Kaufer of MIT and Oscar di Montigny of Mediolanum, we present the point of view of Marco Piccolo, Head of the Strategy and Communication Department of Banca Etica.
WHERE DO WE STAND?
“When we created Banca Etica more than 20 years ago, we listened to the context in which we were moving, that demanded a different attention to money, as an instrument of economic, social and human growth and not of overpowering. And we gave a response to a need that today, more than back then, is increasingly explicit: to bring the person back to the center. And it is important for us to see that even subjects that long ago did not address this problem are doing so now”.
WHAT KIND OF CHANGE IS NEEDED?
“Banks must go back to being at the service of people. Either they recover, indeed, a social and value dimension and become accelerators and flywheel of local growth, or they will lose the game to digital platforms, which are starting to do banking and can rely on immense capital. The recovery of the relational dimension therefore becomes fundamental. In fact, banks today live in a scenario in which they could easily disappear within 15 years. In order to free themselves from this position, they could therefore propose themselves as organizations that do not only manage money, but also work on projects with the objective of holding together the interests of individuals and the community”.
WHAT IS THE RISK?
“The time dimension is undoubtedly important, because we are talking about a change in processes and not in initiatives. And so while on the one hand it is the long term that allows processes to take root, it must on the other hand be considered that whoever is faster will acquire dominant positions. Unfortunately, the problem with this sector is that it is characterized by an absence of biodiversity, which has not been cultivated as a value. And while it is true that there are some examples of banks that are trying to change and stand out, we”ll have to see how deep this transformation will go and change the culture, or whether it ends up actually staying on the surface and being just an artifice”.
WHO CAN INTERVENE?
“It honestly doesn’t seem to me that politics is able to counter the degenerative processes of finance. And this is worrying. So, an important role remains in the hands of individuals. We have to take back our relationship with money and reason in terms of sustainability, which is measured over time and in the community where people grow up. We must recover our relationship with others as a fundamental element of life, and reason in less individual terms. After all, the bank is a community of subjects, people, customers, partners, workers, who may have different interests but share a vision of society and this sharing makes them interact, find solutions and make choices in which everyone can find themselves”.
