Italy's cooperative credit banks after the 2016 reform: two groups and one Alpine protection scheme
Italy's banche di credito cooperativo (BCC), called casse rurali in Trentino and Casse Raiffeisen in South Tyrol, are small mutual banks governed by Articles 33-37-ter of the Testo Unico Bancario (Legislative Decree 385/1993) and entered in the Banca d'Italia's Albo delle banche. Decree-Law 18/2016, converted by Law 49/2016, inserted Article 37-bis TUB and created the gruppo bancario cooperativo: BCCs now operate under a parent bank through a cohesion contract, and under Article 36(1-bis) a BCC that withdraws or is excluded from its group must convert into a joint-stock company, with Banca d'Italia authorisation, or go into liquidation.
The three structures
| Structure | Parent / hub | Supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Gruppo Bancario Cooperativo Iccrea | ICCREA Banca S.p.A. - Istituto Centrale del Credito Cooperativo | ECB (significant group) |
| Gruppo Cassa Centrale - Credito Cooperativo Italiano | Cassa Centrale Banca - Credito Cooperativo Italiano S.p.A., Trento | ECB (significant group) |
| Raiffeisen Südtirol IPS | Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen dell'Alto Adige S.p.A. (Raiffeisen Landesbank Südtirol AG), Bolzano | Banca d'Italia (less significant institutions) |
Under Article 37-bis(1) TUB the parent of a cooperative group is a bank in joint-stock form, at least 60% of whose capital is held by the member BCCs, with a minimum net worth of EUR 1 billion (as amended by Decree-Law 91/2018). Article 37-bis(2-bis) requires that directors expressing the member BCCs make up half plus two of the parent's board. Because both national groups are significant under the SSM, the ECB list names every member BCC individually inside its group.
Article 37-bis(1-bis) gives BCCs headquartered in the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano two options: their own provincial cooperative group, or an institutional protection scheme under Article 113(7) of the CRR. The South Tyrol banks took the second route: the Raiffeisen Südtirol IPS cooperative was founded in June 2019 by 39 Raiffeisenkassen, the Landesbank and RK Leasing, and the Banca d'Italia approved the scheme in November 2020. The Trentino casse rurali instead joined the Cassa Centrale group.
What the TUB requires of a BCC
- Members. At least 500 members (Article 34), who must reside, be based or operate continuously in the bank's territory of competence. The territory and lending rules are set in each bank's articles on the basis of Banca d'Italia criteria (Article 35(2)), which is why bank names carry towns, valleys or provinces such as Alta Murgia, Metauro or Funes.
- Lending. Credit must be granted predominantly to members; the Banca d'Italia may allow a temporary exception only for stability reasons (Article 35(1)).
- Governance. One member, one vote regardless of the number of shares, and no member may hold shares with a total nominal value above EUR 100,000 (Article 34). Each share has a nominal value between EUR 25 and EUR 500 (Article 33).
- Profits. At least 70% of annual net profit goes to the legal reserve, and a share set by law goes to the mutual funds for the promotion of cooperation (Article 37).
Size of the population
The ECB list of supervised entities at the 1 September 2026 cut-off shows roughly 65 banks in the Cassa Centrale group, about 110 in the Iccrea group and about 38 Casse Raiffeisen among the Italian less significant institutions. The figure on this page is an estimate from that official count. Mergers between neighbouring BCCs keep reducing it, and a merged bank usually takes a new name, so rosters from earlier years quickly go out of date.
Notes for vendors and analysts
- The group parents direct and coordinate their members under the cohesion contract, so many decisions on shared services and risk policy sit at the parent rather than at the local bank.
- Each BCC remains a separate bank with its own ABI code in the Albo delle banche and its own LEI; the LEI is the key used in ECB supervisory lists.
- Casse Raiffeisen usually carry both an Italian and a German name, which matters when matching names across sources.