The Italian antitrust agency is investigating the switch of Intes’ customer to a mobile unit

Giulia Segreti and Valentina Za

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s antitrust watchdog said on Thursday it had opened an investigation into how the country’s largest lender, Intesa Sanpaolo, began redirecting thousands of customers to its new mobile-only service, Isybank.

The investigation, launched following complaints from the main party in the ruling coalition and a warning from the central bank, reveals the digital challenges banks face as they seek to modernise their IT infrastructure and cut costs.

Isybank, a cloud-based, low-cost mobile bank, is a key part of Intesa CEO Carlo Messina’s long-term strategy to counter competition from financial technology by focusing the bank on value-added services such as wealth management and insurance.

Italy’s competition watchdog criticised the way Intesa informed account holders about the change, adding that it had received more than 2,000 complaints.

An Intesa spokesman said the bank had complied with existing rules and would work with the regulator and individual customers to meet their needs.

Intesa informed customers via a digital message sent to their online and mobile banking accounts, just like any other message from the bank.

The regulator said the message was “ambiguous and sent in a manner inconsistent with the importance of the matter at hand.”

Many Intesa bank customers complained that – partly also due to the summer holidays – they received the notification only after the deadline to remain with the traditional bank had passed.

The lack of written notice had already drawn criticism from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, which last month asked the Treasury to give Intesa customers more time to opt out of what politicians described as “forced migration.”

“The antitrust investigation… is great news,” said Letizia Giorgianni, a parliamentarian for Meloni’s Italian Brothers party.

The complaints also prompted Italy’s central bank to step in to monitor the transition.

After launching Isybank in June, Intesa began acquiring customers in early October who it believed were not using the services of its branches.

Intesa reported that of approximately 300,000 transferred customers, only 1,500 canceled their subscriptions, while the company opened 50,000 new accounts at Isybank, a number he claims could easily reach 1 million.

“We believe that our digital customers will benefit from… the most advanced standards of services and technologies at an international level,” he said.

The move, which involved changing bank details, temporarily blocked some people’s accounts.

The antitrust authority stated that the transfer to Isybank brings with it “important changes” in account regulations, depriving customers of some services.

Intesa said at a presentation in June that it would increase the number of services that Isybank users would be able to access over time.

The current IT infrastructure of banks is outdated and often becomes unwieldy due to mergers that involved combining different systems. As a result, moving to the cloud becomes extremely difficult.

(Additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte in Rome; Editing by David Evans and Andrea Ricci)