UBI Banca Group

As a result of new loan disbursements – €1,666 million for over 20,800 loans – total
outstanding loans backed by guarantee bodies and guarantee funds amounted at year-end to
almost €4 billion.
The broad range of existing products was updated to incorporate the main initiatives organised
in co-operation with trade associations (e.g. Assofranchising) and local public institutions
(chambers of commerce, regions and provinces), in addition to specific initiatives launched at
local level by individual Group banks. During the year the range of services and products was
also reviewed to simplify and update the rates and charges applied to convention agreement
credit lines to bring them more into line with the increased cost of funding and credit risk and
with the actual value of the guarantees acquired in terms of compliance with the requirements
set by the Bank of Italy supervisory regulations for the purposes of reducing capital
requirements. With regard to the latter, in order to able to benefit from the smaller capital
requirements made possible by the measures mentioned, changes were made in the last
quarter of the year to IT and reporting systems designed to identify guarantees acquired on the
basis of the following factors: the legal status of the guarantor (guarantee bodies registered
pursuant to Art. 106 or Art. 107 of the consolidated banking act), type of guarantee (direct or
first request or subsidiary), the possible presence of suitable counter guarantees.
In the light of the growing Group business with guarantee bodies and the corporate changes in
progress concerning these (company reorganisations and mergers between guarantee bodies
and the transformation of some guarantee bodies into intermediaries supervised by the Bank
of Italy), a new service model was adopted during the year designed to standardise the
processes for stipulating conventions, for assessing guarantee bodies and monitoring
operations for all the banks in the Group.
In order to support that business, the internet platform “UBI-Confidi Web” (with registrations
to-date by over 125 guarantee bodies) was implemented with new functions designed to
facilitate information exchange between the Bank and guarantee bodies with which
agreements are held and also to manage business.
Finally, with a view to supporting local businesses and providing a concrete answer to
worrying concerns over credit rationing for the real economy, initiatives are being studied for
specific “local aggregations” (represented for example by trade associations), designed to
acquire liquidity to be “recycled” by making credit lines available under competitive conditions
destined to business communities in the local markets of the Group.
THIRD SECTOR
Changes in the quantitative and qualitative nature of the demand for welfare, resulting from
the growing differentiation in social needs, have made standard responses provided by public
sector provision insufficient, especially in consideration of the continuous and structural
contraction of its finances. In this context new space has opened up for intervention by the
third sector, which is now called upon to play a fundamental role in society in Italy.
In order to meet this challenge, nonprofit organisations must rethink their activities to address
the emergency of the growing need for resources in a context of progressively diminishing
public and private sector finance caused by the economic crisis. The role of the banking sector
is therefore central because it can make an important contribution in assisting the third sector
on its path to social innovation and sustainable growth.
In July 2011 the banks in the Group started to market products and services under the brand
name UBI Community, a new service model dedicated to the church and non-church,
nonprofit world. The model was identified and developed as part of a project launched in 2010,
designed to further develop the good positioning of the UBI Banca Group in the sector
(strengthened by a share of deposits and loans historically higher than the average for the
banking sector, thanks to a traditional presence in regions in which nonprofit organisations
are more numerous) and to furnish concrete answers to the needs mentioned above.
The network banks organised a series of meetings for the launch of UBI Community, designed
mainly for operators in the sector in the principal towns and cities in which they operate. The
road-show got off the ground in Milan on 10 th November 2011, moving to Pavia, Jesi, Genoa
and Bergamo. It will continue in 2012 to reach other important towns and cities: Brescia,
Turin, Varese, Rome.
The requirement on which the UBI Community service model is based is the presence in
branches of willing and qualified personnel who are able to understand the specific nature of
nonprofit realities. The network banks therefore started a dedicated training programme for
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