Civibank accelerates growth and prepares 2027-2029 plan

Growth in deposits, an increase in assets under management and a profit that exceeds business plan targets. For Civibank, 2025 marks a phase of consolidation of results after the reorganisation begun in recent years. A path that, as President Alberta Gervasio explains, is starting to produce tangible effects on the operational and commercial level. "We are reaping the fruits of the end of the reorganisation project, which in a first phase concerned systems, with the centralisation of support services to free up resources for strictly banking activities, and in a second phase concerned people through the specialisation of services in a generalist bank".

The organisational reorganisation also had an impact on management. The bank started a process of strengthening the management structure, with the aim of integrating commercial and credit competencies. "In this process, the parent company and the board of directors have been careful to follow the interpretation of the territory. In the change of top management, we have identified a new general manager in Luca Cristoforetti, who contemplates a commercial part and a credit part in order to reduce response times to customers, and we have also changed the sales manager. In the integration with the Sparkasse Group, we also had the help of external consultants to bring two cultures together,' notes the president.

On the numbers front, 2025 confirms the bank's strengthening in its reference territory, Friuli Venezia Giulia, with positive dynamics on both the funding and lending sides. "We grew on the funding side by around 5% to 3.2 billion and by 16% on the managed assets side. In addition, we continued to work on lending with EUR 560 million in loans during the year, totalling EUR 2.95 billion in loans between households and businesses, and we are very strong in subsidised loans for SMEs. At the regional level, we are first in Frie financing (loans granted under the Revolving Fund for Economic Initiatives in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, a public regional instrument designed to support business investments, ed) and support for the agricultural system. The first few months of this year have been positive and are going in the direction envisaged by the business plan,' Gervasio emphasises, pointing out that the economic results confirm the growth path started with the 2023-2026 business plan. 'In terms of results, we closed with a net profit of EUR 18 million, which, added to those of the previous years of the 2023-2026 business plan, allow us to reach a total of EUR 38 million in accumulated profits over the two years, compared to the EUR 28 million we had set as our target for the same period.

There is also improvement on the credit quality front: 'We are also doing well on the credit side. The necessary provisions are lowering, which means that the quality is improving," explains Gervasio, who looking ahead announces that the bank is already at work on the next strategic cycle: "We are going to prepare the 27-29 plan and the objective will be to increase territorial penetration.
A strategy that also includes strengthening the physical presence for the bank that has a high solidity with a Core Tier 1 of 20.2%. The network now has 64 branches, with a strong concentration in the province of Udine and a development plan in the other areas of the region: "We want to increase our presence in the provinces of Trieste and Pordenone. We do this by maintaining branches and new openings'. And in this direction in recent years the bank has already initiated targeted interventions in the network. "We opened a branch in Trieste two years ago and completely restructured two historical branches in Udine, one in 2024 and one in 2025". The strengthening of the commercial network has also been accompanied by new hires: 'We have hired 65 people in the last two years to support the commercial side both at the counter and as consultants'.

The model therefore remains that of the territorial bank, but with a selective and integrated approach with the local economic system. "We are a territorial bank, which also means being able to work in a chain with institutions and the economic and production sector, combining the needs of entrepreneurs with the incentive system that the region provides. On this I must say that we have done several things".