UBI Banca Group

Advertising and marketing initiatives to support the market comprised a variety of activities
including editorial supervision of special private banking articles published in major national
daily newspapers and periodicals and also an initiative was organised in co-operation with
Radio 24. This involved commercials and answers to listeners questions provided by
professionals from UBI Private Banking. Finally, two important partnerships were formed with
Porsche Italia and Rotary, with similar target customers to those of UBI Private Banking, to
organise local co-marketing initiatives and events.
The Corporate Market
In order to introduce its new distribution model, the corporate distribution network developed
organisational changes in 2011 to focus the service model more carefully on client needs. It
created operational units at the level of the Parent’s Commercial Department to specialise
specifically in non local “top large” and “large” clients, while maintaining the management of
local corporate clients with the Corporate Banking Units, which report directly to the heads of
local departments.
This change in the organisational structure of the commercial distribution network was
designed to provide better management of lending (both with regard to volumes and pricing)
and funding from large corporate clients, in order to be able to guarantee constant
maintenance of structural balance, a requirement felt particularly in the last months of the
year, when the Group was obliged to manage liquidity difficulties which manifested at system
level.
After the revision of the distribution model, at the end of 2011, the corporate market (with the
access threshold raised from a turnover of €5 million to €15 million and the transfer of these
clients to retail branches) numbered 31,500 clients, divided into segments and assisted on the
basis of operational complexity and financial needs.
Clients are assisted by 700 account managers and assistants, working in 64 Corporate
Banking Units (of which four for the management of “top large” clients) and 34 “corners”,
supported, for “foreign commercial” activities, by 300 specialists operating in 37 foreign
centres.
The distinctive approach to corporate clients is based on the concept of an integrated range of
products and services, further strengthened by the creation of Corporate Advisory Teams
working within the Commercial Departments of the network banks. The task of these teams,
composed of product support personnel, is to develop synergies between network bank
customers and the product companies in order to significantly increase the quality and variety
of the UBI Banca range of products and services with a particular focus on high value added
services. The Corporate Advisory Teams in network banks are also required to manage the
demands of businesses on the basis of guidelines already formulated in 2010, which involve
specific programmes as follows:
• Mid Corporate Advisory: systematic activity to analyse the future needs of small to mediumsize
businesses by means of the joint bank-client formulation of a three-year commercial
plan (Corporate Active View);
• Large Corporate Advisory: formulation and implementation of a detailed commercial plan
for “large corporate” counterparties with the involvement of the main areas of expertise in
the Group for the segment (network banks, foreign centres, product companies and centres
of excellence).
From the viewpoint of the development of commercial activity, the negative performance by the
economy and markets resulted in the need in the second half of the year to formulate a
commercial strategy differentiated by customer segment. This involved selective growth of
loans to non local large corporate counterparties and the maintenance of support for local core
corporate counterparties, with resort to subsidised credit instruments or subsidised funding
for the Group where possible in order to maintain the competitivenes of the solutions
notwithstanding the impact of the liquidity crisis.
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