262,000
Employees
20,000
Number of branches
36 thousand
Number of ATMs
3.7 million
Number of POS
(Data as of Dec. 2024 - Source Bank of Italy )
- In Italy you can find 1 in 5 bank branches of the entire euro area. Our country counts 33 branches per 100,000 inhabitantswhich is higher than the euro area average of 30 branches. (2024, Source: ECB)
- In Italy there are 5,500 POS per 100,000 inhabitants, a higher number than the European average of 4,500 POS. (2023, Source: ECB and Eurostat)
The financing of the economy
(Data a - Source Bank of Italy)
Banks play a crucial role in supporting the economy, providing financing to businesses, households and public administration.
1,649 billion
Loans to the private sector and PA
Loans to businesses
84% of SMEs in Italy obtain the full amount requested or at least 75% of the loan requested, compared to 83% of SMEs in the euro area. (2024, Source: SAFE, ECB)
At the end of 2024, 42% of the loans granted to Italian companies went to SMEs, which is higher than the euro area average of 40%. (Source: EBA)
599 billion
Loans to businesses
426 billion
For housing purchase
668 billion
Loans to households
Household savings and bank funding
(Data a - Source Bank of Italy)
Banks play a central role in financing the economy, using funds collected from customers through deposits and bonds.
- 6,031 billion: total value of financial assets held by Italian households, of which the 23% in the form of deposits.
- 83,000 euro: net financial assets per capita in Italy, higher than the euro area average (EUR 70,000).
2,096 billion
Inflows from resident customers
Deposits from resident customers
Bonds
Customers and banking channels
(Source: ABI Observatory "Customer Banks" in collaboration with BVA DOXA - February 2025)
Digital channels
Access to banking services through digital channels is growing steadily.
- Internet Banking and/or Mobile Banking: 25.4 million customers (76%).
- Home Banking/Internet Banking: over 22.3 million customers (64%).
- Mobile Banking (app, smartphone, tablet): over 21.2 million customers (61%).
- Interaction via e-mail or website: approx. 8.4 million customers (24%).
- Chat with operator: approx. 4.2 million customers (12%).
- Chatbot: approx. 2.4 million customers (7%).
- Interaction with the bank on social media: over 3 million customers (9%).
Remote channels
Despite digitisation, physical channels remain essential for many customers.
- ATM: 33.8 million customers (95%).
- ATM machine for withdrawals: approx. 33 million customers (93%).
- Advanced ATMs/self-service areas: approx. 11.9 million customers (34%).
- Telephone bank / call centre / toll-free number: approx. 9 million customers (26%).
Managing Payments
( - Source Bank of Italy)
Banks and other payment service providers play a key role in the management of financial flows between businesses, consumers and public administration, supporting the evolution towards increasingly digital payment instruments.
- 11.6% per year of increase in electronic payments
- 23.103 electronic payment transactions per minute in Italy
In were carried out 14.6 billion of transactions with non-cash instruments, with a total value of 12,186 billion.
Transfers
2.2 billion transactions
of 10.201 billion
Collection arrangements
1.6 billion transactions
of 1.281 billion
Payment card transactions
10.7 billion transactions
of 458 billion
112 million of payment cards
Bank and bank drafts
0.1 billion transactions
of 246 billion
Soundness and capitalisation of the banking sector
(Data a - Source: Bank of Italy)
The Italian banking sector proves to be solid and resilient, able to face adverse scenarios thanks to high capitalisation
Two Italian banks are among the top ten in the euro area per total assets (Source: Bankfocus), confirming the relevance of the sector in the European financial context
Capitalisation ratio (*)
(*) Ratio of total capital to risk-weighted assets
Coefficient relative to CET 1 (*)
(*) Ratio of best quality capital to risk-weighted assets
Reports and Statistics
Studies and research conducted by ABI with the aim of providing analysis and information support of a periodical and monographic nature on the main segments of the national and international banking and financial market.
ABI Monthly Outlook
The ABI's monthly Report on the evolution of financial and credit markets offers an in-depth and up-to-date analysis of the main credit and financial market dynamics, while providing an interpretative key to the most significant economic and financial phenomena. The first part of the Report is devoted to the macroeconomic scenario, with an analysis of the national and international context and the main trends that may affect the financial sector. After a section devoted to public finance and one focusing on the evolution of monetary and financial markets, the Report concentrates on banking markets, providing data and estimates on the performance of the main balance sheet aggregates of Italian banks, including loans, funding, bank interest rates and asset quality.
You can access the collection of compiled monthly reports by clicking here.
ABI-CERVED OUTLOOK on impaired corporate loans
The ABI-Cerved Outlook on corporate impaired loans, produced on a half-yearly basis, disseminates estimates and forecasts of the non-performing loan entry rates of non-financial companies by size class, with the aim of expanding the pool of information available on the national economic fabric. The estimate of bad debt rates is obtained through a process that uses a Cerved score available for the Italian companies as a whole, the CeBi-Score4, as a synthetic assessment of a company's economic-financial risk, transforming it into individual risk indicators or Eidr (Expected individual default rates) and reproportioning the reproportioned Eidr on the historical series published by the Bank of Italy.
The possibility of having an indicator at the individual level with the property of replicating, on average, the dynamics of system-wide lapse rates, provides a powerful estimator of the rate itself at the cluster size level. The historical series since 1990 of decay rates (TD) for the 64 clusters considered in the project was therefore reconstructed by means of a proportion.
ABI and Cerved distinguish non-financial companies into four size classes (micro, small, medium and large), using the criteria defined by the European Commission.
The decay rates obtained feed into a model for estimating the riskiness of business loans with a degree of detail given by the intersection of the sectoral, territorial and dimensional levels of detail.
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ABI - Cerved outlook on corporate impaired loans
Report
17 January 2025
Residential property report
The Residential Real Estate Report is the volume that the Agenzia delle Entrate's Real Estate Market Observatory (OMI), in collaboration with the Italian Banking Association, dedicates to the residential real estate market in order to provide an in-depth analysis of the past year. In particular, the Report illustrates the trend of the affordability index drawn up by ABI's Economic Analysis Office for Italian households as a whole, both at national and regional level.
The residential sector
20 May 2025Press release
20 May 2025