A brave new world of banking after COVID-19

On January 1, 2020, Marco Rottigni took up a new position as head of Intesa Sanpaolo’s International Subsidiary Banks Division (ISBD). His passport was packed. He planned to visit each of the group’s 11 banks across Central and South-Eastern Europe and beyond – spending time with colleagues, deepening his understanding of the individual businesses and fine-tuning strategies.
And then, he says, “the tsunami hit”.
“The pandemic has been a turning point in every sense: for me, for our colleagues and for our clients,” he says, “touching us professionally and personally.”
Rottigni is from Bergamo, the Italian city at the epicentre of Italy’s COVID-19 battle. “It is hard to explain how deeply this has affected us,” he says simply.
His first concern, as the enormity of the unfolding crisis became apparent, was the health and safety of the division’s 23,000 employees, their families and their clients.
The result was an emergency response of which Rottigni is enormously proud. “Ours is a big responsibility. We needed to get credit to families, to companies, to allow them to weather the storm of the temporary liquidity crises they faced and to protect jobs. We had to act, quickly, to show we care about the things that matter to them and give a message of hope.”
There was also a need to change the way in which the division worked. “Within a month more than 90 per cent of our team – across a wide geographic region – was able to work from home, from a starting point of not more than 30 per cent.”
Six months on, with the new reality still unfolding, he is taking stock. The banking sector and the world have changed. “We are entering the ‘new normal’, where the paradigms will be very different,” he says. “We face a period of huge volatility, with resurgences of the virus too.”
For the bank there will be changes in strategic objectives, internal organisation and operating models and the approach to looking after clients. And those clients will themselves have different needs and expectations.
“It is hard to evaluate fully the impact of COVID-19. It will clearly be far from easy,” Rottigni admits, but he is undaunted. “I am an optimist. I know we were in a good position and I believe we will emerge stronger.”

New crisis, new paths

Rottigni points to past crises – the bursting of the dotcom bubble, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, sovereign debt. “These shocks made us explore new paths. We learnt that everything must carry on. Crises can happen at any time. Creativity and experimentation are needed.”
His confidence is boosted by observing his department at work. “I am struck by the amazing skill and professionalism of our people, the quality of the managers and their vision for the business,” he says.
A key strength is diversity and a focus on inclusion. In the Milan office alone, there are 19 nationalities speaking 15 languages. “We are multi-cultural, multi-faith, we have a good gender split, with many women in management. We champion internal mobility.” This diversity, he believes, shapes not only ISBD, but also the culture of the Intesa Sanpaolo group more widely.
The longstanding experience of individual banks in their own countries, meanwhile, gives real impetus. “It means we can help stimulate the economic and social growth of those countries. We take a bottom-up and top-down, global and local approach.”
Accordingly, Intesa Sanpaolo’s longstanding commitment to local communities remains key. Rottigni highlights Alexbank, the Egyptian subsidiary, where a range of CSR projects now includes Saving Hearts, a three-year collaboration with the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation to establish an echocardiography facility in Cairo. This will allow treatment for an extra 12,000 heart patients each year.