Private Banking in Italy: Challenges and Opportunities in Business Models

This chapter investigates the private banking development in Italy to highlight the challenges and opportunities in business models. Private banking indicates the provision of banking and financial services to customers with significant assets and characterized by financial needs or other needs not easily standardized. For some time now, also in Italy private banking services have been influenced by new market dynamics, new technologies and rapidly changing competition. We investigate private banking services and the evolution of the private banking market in Italy, with particular attention to the optimal effort by private banking to provide a service, that is not only highly personalized, but also increasingly automated. The results show the main private banking operators and the type of customers served. Through the study of a concrete case, the chapter highlights how the group’s optimal effort in training its private bankers and understanding customers in every aspect, from the simplest to the most complex, has made it possible to guarantee the best consultancy in creating value in the financial, social security and insurance fields, always with the utmost transparency and confidentiality for the protection of the client’s assets. This chapter contributes to the literature investigating private banking from an organizational perspective and providing new points of view for the consolidation of private banking activity in Italy.