Innovation and Digital

In order to meet the changes in our clients’ expectations and to address developments in our core businesses, the 2023-26 Strategic Plan “One Brand-One Culture” includes what we have called our Digital Agenda, a three-year roadmap intended to significantly upgrade the Group’s technology ecosystem. Today we are positioned as an innovative bank in terms of our approach to the various businesses, technologies and products, while remaining faithful to our tradition of excellence in providing services and caring for our clients.

Support for our clients and salesforce

Our digital transformation is intended above all to enhance our product offering and the channels through which we interact with our clients, developing innovative solutions to make their user experience more effective, and adapting our services and products to the different needs which those using them have.

A significant share of the investments is allocated to developing the digital platforms that support the work of our sales staff and operations staff. In particular, automation systems and artificial intelligence will enable the efficiency of commercial action to be maximized by reducing the cost to serve. For example, we are developing a harmonized digital platform at Group level for the Wealth Management division with a view to facilitating synergies between the various units.

In addition to the solutions designed for individual units, we have also implemented cross-divisional initiatives across the whole Group. We are one of the first Italian banks to implement a journey to cloud process, and our strengthening the cybersecurity measures and solutions we have adopted.

We have been pioneers in the consumer credit sector in Italy, and still today are operating at the cutting edge in this sector in the area of digital innovation.
The growth of our subsidiary Compass Banca has been closely linked to strengthening our digital operations, for example via:

New channels such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), now available at 26,000 merchant POS
New products, such as instant lending, which allow clients to obtain loans almost instantly, exclusively through use of the MyCompass app, by a process which involves automatic evaluation of the customer’s credit standing and the result being known with the space of just a few minutes.

Training our people

The human factor is decisive in the Group’s transformation and digitalization process. As well as acquiring new talents – we anticipate strengthening our IT staff by 15% over the course of the Strategic Plan – we have launched major up-skilling and re-skilling programmes, to strengthen our teams’ technological capabilities.
We aim to bring value-added activities progressively inhouse, to ensure coverage of strongly innovative areas such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, data science and cloud computing.

To further strengthen our profile as innovators, since July 2023 we have partnered with Founders Factory, a UK-based fintech accelerator and venture builder focused on early-stage startups.
With an overall investment of €12m, this joint venture will enable us to promote innovation in financial services by supporting international startups in the early stages of their journey and by investing in the flourishing Italian startup ecosystem. The partnership with Founders Factory will allow 35 fintechs to be created and invested in throughout the next five years.

THE IT STRATEGIC PLAN AND THE KEY INITIATIVES BY DIVISION

Divisional ambitions: Enablers

PROJECTS

3 Years

25 Programmes

~300 Projects

The IT strategic plan is structured over a 3Y time horizon and is made up of 25 programmes bringing together around 300 projects focusing on business specific as well as Group/cross divisional needs.

INVESTMENT

€230m

up25% annual average compared to IT Plan 2019-23

MAIN PROGRAMMES	DESCRIPTION
Digital Wealth Platform	Consolidation of a uniform technology platform to maximizes synergies between legal entities and improve the overall digital posture.
Innovation Acceleration for CIB	Innovation roadmap aimed at strengthening business competitiveness through data valorization, AI-based automation and cuttingedge platforms.
Digital Driven Consumer Finance	Enhancement of the digital offering through new channels (e.g. BNPL), new products (e.g. instant lending) and expansion into international markets.
Data valorization platform	Consolidation of Group data platform to improve business development, cross selling, ESG integration and fulfillment of regulatory requirements through real-time analytics and AI.
Smart automation platform	Development of a common technology platform to support all smart automation (RPA, AI, Low Code) and dematerialization (e.g. electronic signatures) initiatives.
Journey to Cloud	Adoption of a "Hybrid Cloud" approach, combining the current "on-premise" systems with Cloud’s advantages (on-demand capacity and system upgrades).