The Group will enhance its technological assets by 2015 through agreements with international partners
The Board of Directors of UniCredit today gave the green light to Unicredit Services, the Group's global service company, to start the analysis of the conditions for implementation of the initiatives covered by the Newton program.
The UniCredit Board of Directors has delegated Paolo Fiorentino, Group Chief Operating Officer, to agree, with UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions, on individual plans defined to implement new business models.
The Newton program, the basics of which were outlined within the UniCredit strategic plan presented in November 2011, aims to achieve high levels of internal efficiency by exploiting its process know-how and technology assets.
The initiatives which have been identified as part of the program are mainly partnerships with international companies who are leaders in their field. Their goal is to accelerate the transformation of the Group's operative machine while constantly evolving and, where possible, taking advantage of opportunities to develop in the non-captive market.
"The Newton Program" - says Paolo Fiorentino - "will ensure the growth and performance of our assets by leveraging on our internal competencies and on the differentiating factors that strategic partners might offer us; this is necessary to enable us to be able to respond to the need for continuous innovation required by the market, and create the conditions to extend our business to new customers".
The perimeter of the initiatives - to be developed in compliance on country-level with legal and regulatory needs - involves around 2,200 people and mainly concerns IT infrastructure, receivable accounts administration, some IT applications dedicated to Central and Eastern Europe and payments, with total estimated cumulative savings for the first initiatives of over € 1.2 billion in ten years.
The countries that will be involved are Italy, Austria, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.
Milan, August 3, 2012