Italy’s antitrust probes Intesa’s customer shift to mobile service Isybank. On Thursday, the Italian antitrust watchdog said it had initiated an investigation into migrating thousands of Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI) clients to the bank’s Isybank mobile-only service.
The national competition watchdog stated that it had received over 2,000 complaints and was explicitly investigating how Intesa notified customers of its decision. Intesa told customers through a digital message delivered to the inbox of their online and mobile accounts, which is also where they get all other bank notifications.
The regulator described the communication as “ambiguous and sent in a way inconsistent with the importance of the matter at stake.”Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party has already disapproved of the lack of a written notification.
Last month, the Treasury was requested by her Brothers of Italy party to safeguard Intesa consumers by extending their opt-out period for what some lawmakers claimed would be a “forced migration.”
Additionally, the central bank of Italy intervened to oversee the changeover in response to complaints.
One of the main pillars of Intesa CEO Carlo Messina’s long-term strategy to stave off fintech competition is Isybank, a cloud-based, low-cost mobile bank. By slashing costs and concentrating the bank on value-added services like wealth management and insurance, Messina hopes to counteract the competition. Intesa began transferring over 300,000 clients from its old network at the beginning of October, following the introduction of Isybank in June.
According to the bank, Isybank primarily targets 4 million younger clients who do not utilize its branch services. The relocation, however, temporarily impacted some people’s accounts and necessitated changing bank details.
Additionally, the antitrust claimed that the switch to Isybank resulted in “significant changes” to the account terms and conditions.
At a June presentation, Intesa stated that it would gradually expand the range of services that Isybank customers could access through their accounts. The present IT architecture of high-street banks is antiquated and sometimes unmanageable due to mergers that combined disparate systems, making the cloud transition exceedingly tricky.
