When it comes to the world of financial services, Italy is not considered to be a big player. Understandably, with an area as small as Italy and with its major associations with the fashion world, it is not assumed to be one for FinTech startups. However, one could not be more wrong. Italy is slowly emerging, showing itself up in the FinTech and financial world, and here some popular contributions:
Intesa Sanpaolo, too, resulted from a merger between two banks, named Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI. Forcing its presence in the Italian marketplace, it is an evident leader. It has slowly been emerging and showing its presence in international markets, specifically those of the Middle East, North Africa and the Central-Eastern Europe. Upon its formation in the year 2007, Intesa Sanpaolo overtook UniCredit Group in terms of being the largest bank in Italy. Intesa Sanpaolo too is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. As of last year, Intesa Sanpaolo is the first banking group when considering market capitalization, but stands a runner up when considered using total assets.
Based in Bologna, ShopFully has earned itself a good 20 million Euros in terms of funding, from not just backers located in Italy, but also internationally. ShopFully is fully embracing the new digital age, and is providing a digital alternative to the paper flyers that are normally distributed in excess to attract potential customers. However, that is not all what is so magnificent about it. The main strength of ShopFully is its ability to gather data about customers, and then makes decisions for them, in order to enhance their shopping experience.
3) MoneyFarm
Moneyfarm, an online independent financial advisor, aims to streamline the investment advisory supply chain by providing its customers with the opportunity of managing their investments at lower costs, eliminating the risks of potential conflicts of interest.
4) Satispay
Having been invested in by the founders of the Google Wallet project, this is one to watch out for. Essentially, Satispay is an app that lets its users pay stores and other individuals easily, without any troubles, just by the use of a smartphone. It is as simple as choosing a recipient from your list of contacts, entering the amount, and hitting the send button. Where it attracts most users is in the fact that it lowers transaction fees. This encourages the use of said app for day to day events like gas refills, as it offers no transaction fee on transactions under 10 euros.
5) Unipol
Unipol Gruppo Finanziario is an Italian based company that provides financial services. It operates in the fields of insurance and banking, and has also earned itself the title of being the country’s fourth-largest insurer. For insurance, it trades under different names of brands like UnipolSai Assicurazioni, Linear Life, to state the most common ones, and for banking, it operates under the name Unipol Banca.
6) Neosurance
Based in Italy and founded by Andrea Silvello, Neosurance is the first Virtual Insurance agent that sells micro policies in the market. It is a mobile platform that delivers insurance to its users. It offers a plug-and-play platform that proposes micro-policies to its users by just a notification on their smartphones.
7) S-Peek
Founded by Mattia Ciprian and Valentino Pediroda in the year 2009, S-Peek entered the Big Data market through its ability to analyze the balance sheets of companies in order to determine their health. The fact that a company could have millions of balance sheets is what makes it a Big Data company. With a free app, S-Peek presents a huge cluster of numbers to its users in a single, coherent and understandable form.
Based in Mogliano Veneto, Generali Italia, a subsidiary of the Generali Group, is an Italian insurance company.
9) BNL
Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, headquartered in Rome, is an Italian Bank. Since the year 2006, it has been a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, and is considered to be Italy’s sixth largest bank. BNL offers its users services of not just banking, but it also provides them with an app called ‘BNL Trading’, that helps provide users of trading information at all times and helps keep their trading and investments in control.
10) UniCredit
Unicredit rose to existence through the merger between several Italian banks, major ones being Unicredito and Credito Italiano. Being an Italian global banking company and a provider of financial services, UniCredit has its network spanned in over 50 markets in 17 countries, with a total exceeding 8,500 when it comes to the number of branches. The way it has positioned itself in the Eastern and Western Europe is what lets it be the one of the holders of the highest market share in the region. Moreover, UniCredit is a part of the Euro Stoxx 50.
