INTESA SANPAOLO AWARDED BY EFMA

Wins competition involving a panel of 70 international banks and targets the quality standard of web leaders;

November sales exceed one million on-line;

Artificial intelligence and a centre of excellence in digital marketing created with Accenture to triple the target by 2023;

Environmental benefits and allocation of commissions to green projects;

Artificial Intelligent Sales, Intesa Sanpaolo's digital sales acceleration programme, has been awarded by EFMA (European Financial Marketing Association) as the best innovative project in the Digital Marketing & Sales category in the EFMA-Accenture Banking Innovation Awards 2021. The Bank won the competition from a panel composed of 70 international banks, which in total submitted 800 innovative projects.

AI Sales was created in Intesa Sanpaolo’s centre of excellence for digital marketing, in collaboration with Accenture Interactive. The programme uses artificial intelligence to guarantee service standards that strive to match the commercial leaders on the web.

The objective for Intesa Sanpaolo is to triple digital sales by 2023. At the beginning of November, the bank had already surpassed the symbolic milestone of the first million current accounts, cards, loans, health services and insurance products purchased via app or internet banking. An initial result achieved thanks to the activation of a number of tools, from the simplification of products, to the digitalisation of sales processes, to communication and customer assistance at all stages of the purchase process. Work has also been done on the connection between sales channels, so that even a purchase started in a branch or in a physical space can be completed on-line. The latter method has resulted in an additional 2 million on-line sales.

"We are extremely proud of this international recognition", commented Andrea Lecce, Head of Sales & Marketing Private and Corporate Retail at Intesa Sanpaolo. "It rewards a marketing approach that is highly flexible and very beneficial to the customer. It requires the deployment of multiple skills to ensure the highest standard of service in terms of support and security. The use of artificial intelligence has been fundamental to offer a service in line with the expectations and needs of our customers, able to ensure continuity to the relationship of trust established over time".

Digital sales are also good for the environment because they require fewer people to travel. In order to encourage them and make their impact understood on a large scale, Intesa Sanpaolo has decided to allocate part of the commissions to green projects, for example, to reforestation initiatives and the redevelopment of metropolitan areas.

30.12.2021