economy and politics

Bosisio (CEO of Banco Mediolanum): "2024 is going to be the best year of our lives in Spain"

MADRID Nov. 1 () –

The CEO of Banco Mediolanum, Luca Bosisio, stated this week that “2024 is going to be the best year of our life in Spain” thanks to a growth that stands at 140%.

This was expressed by the top leader of the Spanish subsidiary, a business focused on financial advice that arrived in the country in 2000 from Italy, in an interview given to the Europa Press and Efe agencies at the group’s headquarters in the municipality. of Basiglio, near Milan.

Going into detail, Bosisio has focused on data such as that the entity had registered 930 million euros in net deposits at the end of September, an amount already greater than the sum of the complete years of 2022 and 2023, when they were harvested, respectively, 518 and 403 million. “It is evident that we are in an acceleration that has nothing to do with a traditional business,” he said.

“We think it is a direction that is going to go further every year,” he commented and then went on to explain his financial advice model, which consists of naturally cultivating corporate philosophy and values ​​in the agents in his network (they call them ‘family bankers’ and is the largest in Spain with 1,600 agents) to subsequently permeabilize the customer base.

In fact, he has pointed out that, so far in 2024, the Spanish network of ‘family bankers’ is registering an average growth of 35%, while the average portfolio managed by each one is 7 million euros. On a broader level, Banco Mediolanum currently has almost 250,000 clients in Spain who hold a volume of assets worth around 12,000 million euros.

“This is a topic that takes time to do,” he said about this way of growing organically, since they discard inorganic growth by purchasing other companies or competitors: “Here in Italy we have been offered it a lot of times,” has indicated as an example.

Linked to this, in the press appearance prior to this interview, the CEO of Banca Mediolanum, Massimo Doris, leader of the Italian parent company and son of the founder and one of the fathers of the development of financial advice, Ennio Doris, stated that the The growth that they predict for the Spanish market lies, precisely, in the historical vision that the Italian case offers.

Thus, Doris expressed that Spain does not have “strong and important competition” as they do today in Italy, to which Bosisio has responded that, being very similar countries, in Spain “we are only at the beginning” of this story.

“In Spain we want to grow through ‘family banks’ and clients, not through purchases of other entities, which makes no sense, and the same in Italy. We will continue to grow, as we have done until now. More time is needed, but, in my opinion, It is a more solid growth,” summarized the top executive of the Italian firm, Massimo Doris.

Regarding this point of incorporations, Bosisio has pointed out that they are already hiring professionals from the private banking competition of large banks. “This already tells you that they see us as a reference model,” he added about these professionals who agree to take the leap.

“We clearly prefer to build these professionals from the beginning or sign high-quality people,” he stressed on this way of facing growth, since he has stated that, so far this year, there is a significant rotation in its network to the sound of a hundred arrivals that have been counteracted by a similar number of departures.

Asked how the achievement of BBVA’s hostile takeover of Banco Sabadell, one of the largest corporate operations in the Spanish financial sector in history, would affect their business, Bosisio stated that, for them, the scenario would represent “an opportunity” to continue growing.

Specifically, he has argued that the corporate operation would intensify the trend of recent years of closing commercial offices when what clients need is “to have someone by their side who can help them”, as this is a point in which Mediolanum wants to establish itself as benchmark with its financial advisory model.

“It is something that interests us because you will have more clients who will need support from models like ours,” he reasoned, recalling that Spain has gone from having 46,000 traditional banking offices to 17,000 branches in two decades.

However, he has also claimed that, whether the operation goes ahead or not, they will “grow independently of them.”

Finally, asked about possible alliances with other entities such as the one signed with Correos to provide cash management services, Bosisio pointed out that “without a doubt we are looking at everything that is possible to offer our clients.”

Along these lines, he has given as an example that in Italy you can receive and deliver money in tobacconists and that in Spain they can see if possibilities like this can make sense: “The tobacconist’s shop is an example; you can be a supermarket or wherever you want, because it is not It is necessary to have bankers to carry out this operation and service.

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