The purpose

The purpose of the Fund is the protection of the depositors of the member Banks (BCC-CR), in compliance with the law's provisions and in accordance with the principles of mutuality and of the spirit of credit cooperation.

The Fund shall intervene:

  • in the event of administrative liquidation of the member banks and, in the case of branches of Community Cooperative Credit Banks who are affiliated and operating in Italy, if the guarantee system of the State of affiliation has intervened;
  • in the event of resolution of member banks;
  • in transactions for the assignment of assets, liabilities, companies, branches of business, assets and legal relationships that can be individually identified;
  • to overcome the state of disruption or risk of disaster of a member Bank.

The Fund is supervised by the Bank of Italy and its members are banks belonging to the Italian Cooperative Credit System. Branches of EU and non-EU banks may also join the Fund, as long as their activity is based on the principles of credit cooperation.

The Fund works in close cooperation with Federcasse (the National Association of Cooperative Banks) and makes use of the local Federations as its territorial units.

The Fund's operational processes are carried out in accordance with the new regulatory framework for Deposit Guarantee Schemes (DGSs), harmonised at European level and based on Directive 2014/49/EU of 6 April 2014 (the so-called DGSD, acronym for Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive).

In order to ensure a homogeneous application at European level, the Directive assigns to the European Banking Authority (EBA) the power to issue guidelines DGSs must comply with.

For this reason, the Fund carries out its activities in compliance with the guidelines issued by the EBA, in particular with reference to the guidelines issued on the following subjects:

  • methods of calculating contributions by banks to Deposit Guarantee Schemes (EBA/GL/2015/10);
  • payment commitments of the banks related to the aforementioned contributions (ABE/GL/2015/09);
  • international cooperation agreements among Deposit Guarantee Schemes (EBA/GL/2016/02);
  • stress exercises to test and preserve the organisational and financial effectiveness of Deposit Guarantee Schemes over time (EBA/GL/2016/04).