The last two years have stressed how special and important banks are. When the financial system fails, the whole economic system is affected. The financial sector has undergone an unprecedented wave of innovation, change, consolidation and now crisis. We now have a better understanding of the...

The Basel Agreements, designed to pursue financial stability, have been instead a cause of instability, revealing fundamental analytical and operational weaknesses. The idea to define a constant capital ratio through complex statistical models implies serious dangers. A radical change is...

Do rating models embody correctly the impact of macroeconomic variables on debtors’ solvency, determining a lag in downgrading? In pre-crisis periods, when interest rates increases are recorded as well as decreases in real growth rates, rating assessments fail to register risk increases in...

This paper analyzes the determinants of credit to medium-sized enterprises before and during the crisis in Italy. While the bank-enterprise relationship seems to be crucial in the granting of credit before the crisis of 2007, during the crisis the results show a greater virtuosity of firms...

The financial crisis has highlighted, among other things, the limits of risk management and the need to identify better solutions. An effective risk management system cannot only depend on a severe internal governance scheme, ignoring other entities potentially involved, such as public...

The ABI choices on Compliance Tests have led to the drafting of the White Paper on Compliance Function and to the need to explore some topic issues. After identifying the categories of checks carried out by the Compliance Function and the main stages of Compliance Risk Management, the analysis...

The definition of an internal process to prevent and manage reputational crises is a priority for banks.The Compliance Function can offer a tangible contribution to implement an effective crisis management process.The definition of a contingency plan, of a team of crisis management and of lines...

Service agreements between the Compliance Function and Internal Auditing can be an effective and efficient option for achieving the objectives assigned to the Function and more generally to the system of corporate controls. Key principles for the drafting of AdS are not meant to be comprehensive...

It is the time for rethinking the international institutional framework organization. The financial system is global and the integration of international financial markets must be protected because it is and will be an important developing factor. Institutions had to change in order to make on...

The current great financial crisis points out the weakness of the originate to distribute model based on the definition by the global banks of a selling chain that is opaque, elusive and unsustainable. The reaction to the crisis must be wide and global: de-engineering of financial instruments,...