Because the commercial pressures in the banks denounced by the unions arrive in Parliament

Commercial pressure, the indications of Fabi in the report of the commission of inquiry

The bicameral parliamentary commission for commercial pressures accepts the complaints lodged by the major representatives of the workers in the banking system. All the details.

WHAT ARE COMMERCIAL PRESSURES

By commercial pressures we mean the set of incentives, motivational or even economic, that push employees in the commercial sector of credit institutions to sell as many investment products as possible. The exacerbation of these actions pushes, on the one hand, employees to have an “aggressive” attitude towards customers , who feel used rather than protected, and on the other, it causes severe stress among bank workers. Since 2017 there has been a bicameral parliamentary commission for commercial pressure within banks and in 2018 MiFID II was launched, the community directive governing financial services within the European Union and which aims to improve the transparency and contestability of the market , thus increasing investor protection.

THE COMMISSION REPORT

As stated in the report of the Commission and as reported by the FABI "the representatives of the trade unions have reported and documented some of the most sensational cases of commercial pressure such as: verbal humiliations, threats of transfer or revocation of holidays or part-time failure to reach budgets. To this the unions have added, increasing the dose, the inclusion by the managers of " new appointments with customers without the knowledge of the worker ", "the organization of" tournaments ", competitions or challenges between territorial areas or branches for compare or reward employee results ”as well as“ remuneration policies strongly linked to sales results ”. The Commission underlined that the “phenomena of betrayed savings require a necessary strengthening of the supervisory tools and policies on the subject to verify compliance, both formal and substantive, with sector regulations”.

THE COMMISSION'S PROPOSALS

The Commission proposes some solutions such as " providing the individual Supervisory Authorities with new powers of investigation, including, for example, mystery shopping which would allow the Supervisory Bodies themselves to verify the behavior actually held by intermediaries towards their customers". In the same perspective and to strengthen its effectiveness, the Commission proposes to " evaluate the opportunity to extend to the opinions of the ACF and the ABF, institutions already present in the Italian legal system , and in particular in arbitration, in which to render enforcing the arbitration decision, the interested party must lodge an application, for this purpose by filing the original or certified copy of the award together with the arbitration agreement, in the registry of the territorially competent Court in whose district the seat of the Arbitration is located ".

THE SILEONI REPORT

During his hearing , last May 17, 2022, the secretary general of Fabi Lando Maria Sileoni, denounced the obsession of banks for "the achievement of results, all concentrated in the short term, because the real goal is only the distribution of very high dividends to shareholders and investment funds ". Secretary Sileoni added that there is an agreement between ABI and trade unions on undue commercial pressure , but that the same is being rejected. "The results are struggling to arrive and the main reason is one: most of the agreements signed within the groups, to improve and adapt the national agreement to the individual companies, have been repeatedly rejected by the banks themselves, by the companies themselves who, in some cases, have refused to guarantee the anonymity of the reports of their employees – reads his report -. Politically, banks have always opposed this deal because they don't want controls by internal unions . In many cases, it would be sufficient to intervene promptly on the territories at the first hint of undue commercial pressure to resolve at least half of the situations. This does not happen ”.

CASES REPORTED: BNL, BPER, INTESA SANPAOLO, UNICREDIT, MONTE DEI PASCHI AND MORE

The cases that the Commission has examined are numerous. The latest, in order of time, concern Bnl but also Intesa Sanpaolo , Unicredit , Banco Bpm, Bper and Mps had the spotlight on the issue. In BNL , the coordination of the Unisin union group denounced "the constant pressure received, the e-mails on products to sell , those on contests to be seized on the fly, those on budgets to be closed, those gruesome on the best and the least good ". Another example concerns the Monte dei Paschi di Siena group. In a video shot last March , sent to the commercial network and uploaded to the group's intranet, Montepaschi's commercial director, Pasquale Marchese , is portrayed standing in front of a desk cluttered with paper and documents and listing what has been made of positive and what is not good. "The first quarter of the year is about to close, which is fundamental for a listed company", says Marchese, and we must " go on like this on private mortgages and net assets ", do more "on personal loans, this is the moment" and “on corporate mortgages, especially those with guarantees”. And again: it is time for "decisive action on the non-life and pension part". Similarly in Unicredit a joint press release from the Unicredit coordinating secretariats of Fabi, First, Fisac, Uilca, Unisin denounces " the pressure to sell policies linked to subsidized loans" and "a generalized drop in attention with respect to the values ​​contained in the agreements on commercial policies ".