Milan, 02/02/2026 – Between 2019 and 2024, in the wealth management segment, Italian banks saw their ability to monetize assets under management decrease despite the growth in fees and indirect funding. In a context of high Euribor, indirect funding grows at annual rates between 4% and 6.5%, but the value extracted per euro of assets decreases, with a more marked impact on smaller banks. This is what emerges from the Excellence Consulting study “High rates and savings management: how the funding mix and monetization change in banks (2019–2024)”.
The research by the Milan-based company was conducted on a panel of 45 banking groups and Italian banks, divided into three size clusters: large banks (assets over 100 billion euros: Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit, Banco BPM, BPER Banca, Banca MPS, UBI Banca (independent until 2019; then merged into ISP and BPER Banca)), medium (assets between 10 and 100 billion: BNL, Crédit Agricole, Credem, Popolare Sondrio, Deutsche Bank, Banca Sella, Banco Desio, Banca di Asti, Popolare Alto Adige, CariBolzano, Credito Valtellinese (independent until 2019; then merged into Crédit Agricole)), and small (assets under 10 billion: CariRavenna, Banca Valsabbina, Popolare Cividale, Agricola Popolare Ragusa, Popolare Puglia e Basilicata, Popolare Pugliese, Banca di Piacenza, Popolare Lazio, Credito Popolare, Banca Cambiano 1884, Banca Passadore & C., CariVolterra, Banca del Piemonte, CariFossano, CariFermo, Banca del Fucino, CariSavigliano, Credito Azzoaglio, Banca di Macerata, Popolare Cassinate, Popolare San Felice 1893, Popolare Lajatico, Popolare Frusinate, Popolare Fondi, Popolare Cortona, Popolare Vesuviana, Popolare Province Molisane, Popolare Sant’Angelo (independent until 2019; then merged into Agricola Popolare Ragusa)).
In the detail of the survey, in the 2019–2024 period indirect funding shows significant growth for all banks, regardless of size. In particular, for large banks the cumulative indirect funding, on overall assets on the order of thousands of billions of euros, goes from 1.3 to 1.6 (+4.0%) and direct funding from 1.3 to 1.4 (+2%); for medium and small banks, with values expressed in billions of euros, cumulative indirect funding rises respectively from 279 to 342 (+4.1%) and from 34 to 47 (+6.5%), while direct funding from 242 to 318 (+5.6%) and from about 51 to 68 (+6.0%).
Overall, savings continue to be intermediated through managed instruments even in a high-rate scenario. The ability, however, to monetize these savings managed on behalf of clients, measured by the ratio between net fees and indirect funding, decreases in all three clusters: for large banks it goes from 1.5% to 1.4% (–10 basis points), for medium banks it falls from 1.4% to 1.3% (–10 basis points), while for small banks it decreases from 1.9% to 1.5% (–40 basis points). The figure is probably explained by the fact that competitive and regulatory pressure compresses the implicit pricing of investment products and services, the product mix has shifted toward solutions with a lower average fee and consequently growth has increasingly been volume-driven and less and less value-driven.
“In the period examined,” comments Maurizio Primanni, CEO of the Excellence Group, “the reduction of the monetization indicator was particularly marked in local and smaller banks, which suffer more from the absence of economies of scale, a less sophisticated offering and a more limited ability of commercial differentiation. In these cases, the growth of funding risks translating into an increase in operational complexity without a corresponding benefit in terms of generated value.”
“The fees/indirect funding ratio,” Primanni further explains, “does not measure the overall profitability of the business, but represents an effective proxy of the ability to monetize the relationship with the client and to compare the evolution of the model over time. The data show that the challenge for banks is not size growth in itself, but the quality of the value-creation model: without an evolution of the offering and advisory, indirect funding risks growing in volumes but not in unit value.”
