The Mediobanca Premier offering benefits from the group’s work with corporates for more than 70 years, and its experience gained by setting up the CheBanca! digital business in 2008, the group said in a statement this week.

Mediobanca said it wants the new business to be a market leader in the medium-high market segment. It will build an advisory and wealth management/protection offering featuring asset management products, and a combined offering based on Mediobanca's capital markets and corporate and investment banking products.

As part of the launch, the firm will be rebranding which will involve all CheBanca! channels.

Mediobanca said in May last year that it intends to grow its wealth management sales force by 25 per cent to more than 1,500 people between 2023 and 2026. Out of the 1,500 people, 1,350 are in the bank’s Premier segment and 170 in the private bank segment (rising 15 per cent). The lender also wants to increase the number of investment bankers in the advisory and capital markets' areas and increase its consumer finance network through strong growth in the digital channel.

(As part of that wealth strategy, CMB Monaco is also part of the plan. This news service spoke last year to CMB’s CEO, Francesco Grosoli.)

The development highlights the continuing evolution of European private banking. Besides its home-grown cohort of business owners and other holders of wealth, Italy has built a form of “non-dom” regime for HNW foreigners.

How it all fits
The Mediobanca’s wealth management division comprises the private banking networks. (Mediobanca Private Banking in Italy and CMB Monaco) and the “product factories” that operate under the Mediobanca Asset Management umbrella (Mediobanca SGR in Italy, Polus Capital Management for illiquid credit, and RAM Active Investment for systematic equity funds).

The wealth arm is led by group general manager Francesco Saverio Vinci. 

Explaining its ambitions for the 2023 to 2026 period, Mediobanca said its business model provides for Mediobanca Premier to deliver “superior growth rates” in terms of financial assets, reaching €115 billion ($124.9 billion), at a compound annual growth rate of 11 per cent, beating an 8 per cent growth rate for the broader market.

“These targets will be supported by the potential market, with Italian households having estimated aggregate financial wealth of over €5.3 trillion, 60 per cent of which is still unmanaged,” the bank said.

Figures for last year point to 5.3 per cent growth in affluent Italian households’ wealth, to reach €1.287 trillion.

Mediobanca Premier will draw on its headcount of about 1,100 professionals (split equally between bankers and FAs) in Italy.

The group reported Q3 2023 financial results in October last year. It will set out its full-year and Q4 data in February.