Bcc Pergola and Corinaldo, aggregation a winning strategy

"We are an embankment against the depopulation of small villages and we have a social function that we manage to reconcile with efficiency, in an area characterised by a good quality of life and a good capacity for savings". Claudio Rovelli knows what it means to be a village bank: his grandfather was one of the founding members of Bcc di Pergola and he used to accompany him to the branch as a child. Over the years, he was first a councillor and then president of this bank, and was one of the inspirers of the merger with the Bcc of Corinaldo, which took place in 2018: two local banks with a history of more than a hundred years, less than 30 kilometres apart and sharing balance sheets burdened in particular by non-performing loans. The aggregation has done well: the number of members has grown to almost 5,500, customers to 36,000, and the balance sheet is in order and improving year by year.

Today, the area of competence, served by 16 branches and 132 employees, is the one straddling the provinces of Pesaro-Urbino, Ancona and Perugia, with Fabriano, Senigallia and Gubbio representing an exception because most of the municipalities in the area have between 3 thousand and 8 thousand inhabitants. "Around here we all know each other and call each other by name," explains Rovelli, who has been general manager of the Bcc di Pergola e Corinaldo for just over two years. The percentage of penetration of the territory is high and this pushes us to grow by internal lines, improving the quality of services and abandoning the idea of doing only traditional credit, mixing the physical channel with the opportunities provided to us by technology at the service of human relations. We only sell what we need because we are a solid, supportive and credible bank". And with the fundamentals in place: in 2023, direct funding reached EUR 609 million (+1.88% compared to the previous year), net profit at EUR 6.5 million ("a better result than the target set by the 2023-2025 strategic plan", notes Rovelli), with 7% allocated to charity and mutuality, and net equity rose to EUR 86 million (+7.5%), strengthening solvency ratios, with the total capital ratio at 31.98%.

"The bank's performance in the first half of the year also confirms that it is in good health," the CEO emphasises, "particularly in terms of credit quality, with the territory and entrepreneurial fabric responding well to the increase in inflation and the rising cost of money.