The 30th annual Congress of Assiom Forex, the Association of financial market operators, opened in Genoa, at the Magazzini del Cotone, on 9 and 10 February. The two-day event, of which Arca Fondi Sgr is a partner, expects the presence of a thousand delegates and aims to be an opportunity for discussion on issues of fundamental importance for operators, institutions and banks.
The rich agenda of events, aimed at providing updates on the most current issues, includes a speech to the financial community by the Governor of the Bank of Italy Fabio Panetta on Saturday morning. The welcome speech by Massimo Mocio, president of Assiom Forex, opened the proceedings of the first day, which was followed by the keynote speech by Piero Cipollone, member of the executive committee of the ECB.
The president of Arca Fondi Sgr, Giuseppe Lusignani, spoke on the sidelines of the inaugural day illustrating the trend of managed savings in Italy in 2023: “2023 was a positive year for the performance of the managed savings sector. After the negative returns of the previous year, in 2023 a positive return returned to savers and fund subscribers. Undoubtedly the sector has seen increased competition from savings bonds, especially government bonds which, with the rise in interest rates – explains Lusignani – have once again attracted the attention of investors and families. However, the net collection was negative, because a part of the savers moved towards government bonds, but overall, also recalling other similar historical phases, the sector held up and it can be said that the performances gave satisfaction”.
Lusignani then offered his forecasts on the subject of managed savings for 2024: “It is clear that macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical risks and expectations on the future evolution of interest rates will have an impact on savers' choices and, obviously, on the managed savings sector. Overall, I believe that we can expect a positive scenario – adds the president of Arca Fondi Sgr – where savers will be able to expect positive returns and the sector will be able to innovate and be reactive to market changes. As a result, I therefore believe that we can return to having a positive collection in 2024″.
2023 was a very positive year for Arca Fondi Sgr, not only because 40 years of activity were celebrated, but also because it generated significant results: “This meant that Arca Fondi returned returns and gave satisfaction to its subscribers , who in turn rewarded Arca with a very important positive net collection – explains Lusignani – Arca is a company that has positioned itself very well in terms of net collection, it is in fact in third place, despite not being the largest company in terms of dimensions. These results are therefore very positive and are the result of a very intense innovation activity, the ability to stay close to the placement networks and to grasp what were the key moments of change in the market. We are very satisfied with this.”
The workshop “Money and technology: how the digital euro and artificial intelligence will transform the financial sector”, moderated by Barbara Valbuzzi, co-head of the ESG Commission of Assiom Forex, saw the participation of Ugo Loeser, CEO of Arca Fondi Sgr, Grazia Orlandini, head of Investments and Investment Products of the Bper Group, and Andrea Prampolini, co-head of the Fintech Commission of Assiom Forex.
On the sidelines of the workshop, Loeser commented: “We are faced with a very important technological paradigm shift, which has the potential to have a very significant impact on all our administrative, underwriting, sales and quota processes. , mutual and investment funds. In this sense, clearly, our considerations go in the direction of prudence – underlines the CEO of Arca Fondi Sgr – as changing the operating model when managing subscribers' savings presents opportunities but also risks, which must be managed” .
“Assogestioni, our trade association, has highlighted some of these problems – adds Loeser – but has also highlighted what the opportunities actually are for improving efficiency, costs and, above all, effectiveness. This translates into shorter times for subscriptions and certainty of the prices at which subscriptions can take place.”
The entire control chain requires particular attention “since if we exchange the tokenized shares of mutual funds on the blockchain – clarifies the CEO of Arca Fondi Sgr – we do so outside the intermediary system and this leads to new challenges in terms of the control chain”.
“At the moment, the introduction of blockchain in many procedures will not have an immediate impact on the asset classes that are included within investment funds – continues Loeser – The trend of technological paradigm shift, which concerns artificial intelligence, blockchain, tokenization and smart contracts, represents an innovation with great investment opportunities and, as with all innovations, there will be winners and losers. However, we must be very careful not to get carried away by enthusiasm when the market enters speculative bubbles, which in the past have always burst, leaving many investors with significant losses”.
Artificial intelligence, part of the paradigm shift that the CEO of Arca Fondi Sgr talks about, will allow a very important development of all credit chains: “Thanks to artificial intelligence, for example, we can read thousands of and thousands of financing contracts – explains Loeser – each different from the other in terms of guarantees and covenants. Thus we can evaluate credit portfolios and the credit risk inherent in these portfolios in a much more timely manner. Finally, there is no doubt that companies like ours, which have hundreds of thousands of customers, will benefit from the ability of artificial intelligence to interact with a vast number of interlocutors with a constant standard of quality for all. We are therefore involved, both on the interaction front and on the investment front, in the revolution that artificial intelligence is bringing” he concludes.
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