Speaking at the 7th Edition of the Credit Village Spring Day ‘NPE Market in a Changing World’ held in Milano on July 7, Prelios Group chairman Fabrizio Palenzona declared: “When as a result of calendar provisioning for banks or default systems, companies experiencing a period of financial difficulty are not being saved, despite having a healthy business, it seems to me this is a defeat for system Italy, not a defeat for the banks. A corporate crisis cannot be treated simply as a question of provisions, without any sort of culture to safeguard companies of fundamental importance for the country. Specifically for the purpose of supporting our enterprises, and also thanks to the insight of Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina, at the end of 2019 we struck up a strategic partnership with Intesa on UTPs (Unlikely to Pay credits), to maximize the number of businesses put back on to a performing basis.”
The partnership “has been a great opportunity for Prelios,” Fabrizio Palenzona added, “enabling us to industrialize UTP management on a large scale, to create a completely new structure in Italy, with the focus on distinctive skills and top-level professionalism. When you provide services, you need the right people. Over recent months and the last couple of years – despite the pandemic – we have hired more than 200 very young people from industry and from the financial system. We really have to make our common interest the center of attention, which means collaboration, because different interests and different ways of seeing things often obstruct the timely action needed to put a company back on a performing basis. So we have to act as a team, understand that we have a common goal, everyone has to play their part, but we have to move fast.”
The Prelios Chairman was a member of the Italian and European Outlook panel, which began after the opening speech from Andrea Enria, Chair of the European Central Bank’s Supervisory Board. The other members of the panel, moderated by Andrea Cabrini, editor of the Class CNBC business and financial TV channel, were Per Anders Fasth (Acting CEO, Hoist Finance), Paolo Fiorentino (CEO Banca Progetto), Corrado Passera (CEO illimity) and Johnny Tsolis (CEO Axactor). “Then there’s the important question of management support services.” Prelios Group chairman said. “Our Group for example has developed BlinkS, an NPE trading platform, which has been a huge success and is cited by the ECB as a tool that facilitates the development of a secondary NPL market and could also be useful for the UTP system. We are also working to promote a financial culture, especially in the SME community. Let's not forget that in the wake of Covid, companies that had never experienced insolvency, including many small- and medium-sized businesses, are now in crisis. Their owners often have no idea what to do and who to turn to. Today it is more important than ever to foster an informed approach through widespread financial education. The Prelios Group feels this social responsibility very strongly: a return to a performing basis is the virtuous objective Prelios intends to pursue for all the positions it manages that fit the bill. This is why we have joined the Foundation for Financial Education and Savings (FEduF), created by the Italian Banking Association to promote financial education in the interests of responsible citizenship and economic legality. This initiative too stems from the sense of responsibility that the Prelios Group, and all its people, feels toward its clients, the business community, our country.”