The Bank of Italy (Italian: Banca d'Italia,, informally referred to as Bankitalia) is the national central bank for Italy within the Eurosystem. It was the Italian central bank from 1893 to 1998, issuing the lira.
In addition to its monetary role, the Bank of Italy is also a financial supervisory authority. In that capacity, it increasingly implements policies set at the European Union level. It is the national competent authority for Italy within European Banking Supervision.[2] It is a voting member of the Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA).[3] It is Italy's designated National Resolution Authority and plenary session member of the Single Resolution Board (SRB).[4] It provides the permanent single common representative for Italy in the Supervisory composition of the General Board of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA).[5] It also hosts the Institute for the Supervision of Insurance (Italian acronym IVASS), which is a voting member of the Board of Supervisors of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).[6] It is also a member of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).[7]
History
The institution was established in 1893 from the combination of three major banks in Italy (after the Banca Romana scandal).[8][9] The new central bank first issued banknotes during 1926.[10] Until 1928, it was directed by a general manager and after this time by a governor elected by an internal commission of managers, with a decree from the president of the Italian Republic, for a term of seven years. In 1863, the crisis of the world money market created panic and the rush to the counters to collect the metallic currency in exchange for the banknotes. The Italian government responded in 1866 by introducing the fiat and legal tender of paper money. The government was accused in this way of favouring the issuing banks, and a long debate called the "banking question" arose about the advisability of having one or more issuers.[11]
The Minghetti-Finali law of 1873 established the mandatory consortium of issuing institutions among the six existing issuing institutions, the National Bank of the Kingdom of Italy, Banca Nazionale Toscana
Missions and organization
Missions
After the charge of monetary and exchange rate policies was shifted in 1998 to the European Central Bank, within the European institutional framework, the bank implements the decisions, issues euro banknotes and withdraws and destroys worn pieces. The main function has thus become banking and financial supervision. The objective is to ensure the stability and efficiency of the system and compliance with rules and regulations; the bank pursues it through secondary legislation, controls and cooperation with governmental authorities.
Following a reform in 2005, which was prompted by takeover scandals, the bank has lost exclusive antitrust authority in the credit sector, which is now shared with the Italian Competition Authority. Other functions include market supervision, oversight of the payment system and provision of settlement services, State treasury service, Central Credit Register, economic analysis and institutional consultancy. As of 2021, the Bank of Italy owned 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, the third-largest gold reserve in the world.[35]
Governing bodies
The bank's governing bodies are the General Meeting of Shareholders
Currency and coinage
Italy has a long history of different coinage types, which spans thousands of years. Since Italy has been for centuries divided into many historic states, they all had different coinage systems, but when the country became unified in 1861, the Italian lira came into place, and was used until 2002. The term originates from libra, the largest unit of the Carolingian monetary system used in Western Europe and elsewhere from the 8th to the 20th century.[37]
Italian lira was introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually form the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. It was subdivided into 100 centesimi (singular: centesimo), which means "hundredths" or "cents". The lira was also the currency of the Albanian Kingdom from 1941 to 1943. There was no standard sign or abbreviation for the Italian lira. The abbreviations Lit. (standing for Lira italiana) and L. (standing for Lira) and the signs ₤ or £ were all accepted representations of the currency. Banks and financial institutions, including the Bank of Italy,[38] often used Lit.[39]
Shareholders
Banca d'Italia had 300,000 shares with a nominal value of €25,000. Originally scattered around the banks of Italy, the shares now accumulated due to the merger of the banks since the 1990s and also a number of pension and social security institutions. The status of the bank states that a minimum of 54% of profits would go to the Italian government, and only a maximum of 6% of profits would be distributed as dividends according to share ratios.[48] Even so, the Bank of Italy stands out among central banks in the Eurosystem as having no state ownership (the National Bank of Belgium and Bank of Greece have mixed ownership).
As of early 2024, the 15 largest shareholders represented slightly over half of the bank's equity, namely UniCredit (5.0 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza ed assistenza per gli ingegneri ed architetti liberi professionisti (4.9 percent), Fondazione ENPAM (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza forense (4.9 percent), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza dei dottori commercialisti (3.7 percent), BPER Banca (3.3 percent), ICCREA Banca (3.1 percent), Generali Italia (3.0 percent), the National Institute for Social Security (3.0 percent), Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro
See also
- Banking in Italy
- Economy of Italy
- Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato
- Governor of the Bank of Italy
- List of central banks
- List of financial supervisory authorities by country
- List of banks in Italy
External links
References
- Bank of Italy – Statistical Database bancaditalia.it, retrieved 21 November 2023^
- National supervisors ECB Banking Supervision, retrieved 2025-11-19^
- Members and Observers