MILAN (ITALPRESS) – Athora Italia, a life insurance company of the Athora Group, presented in collaboration with Nomisma the Look to the future Observatory, a wide-ranging survey on what Italians think about savings, retirement and investments. On the binomial Italians and savings, Jozef Bala, CEO of Athora Italia, Valentina Quaglietti Head of Nomisma Observatories and Sergio Sorgi, sociologist and founder of Progetica, discussed today.
What meaning do Italians give to savings? How do they see their economic situation and what do they expect from tomorrow, who or what will guide their future choices? And how to recreate the confidence needed to develop the market?
Jozef Bala, CEO of Athora Italia, explains, “Our industry has a responsibility to communicate with people in a more direct and accessible way, building a dialogue based on trust and responding effectively to their insurance needs. The Observatory we are presenting today in collaboration with Nomisma was created with the aim of raising awareness and ‘culturing’ on the issues of savings, investments, retirement planning, and protection. We want to consolidate our role as specialists in life insurance, giving continuity to the path started last year with the communication campaign “One day you will thank you.” With this initiative,” he adds, “we wanted to convey a clear message: thinking today about your tomorrow is a concrete value that can be implemented immediately. It is a message that concerns everyone, but it takes on an even stronger meaning for the new generations, who today are looking for tools, solutions, reliable people to build their future with serenity.” From the results that emerged, Italians seem to have well understood that the situation is complicated when they think about the future. For 66 percent a sense of uncertainty prevails and for 52 percent concern and fear, while hope and confidence animate 55 percent and 29 percent of Italians, respectively.
Called to express a comparison with the previous generation, Italians express the belief that saving is as important as it was for their parents (48%), but today saving is perceived as significantly more difficult (40%) and with much less satisfactory results than it once was (41%).
But today what is the ability of Italians to save? Compared with 27 percent who rate their family economic situation as good or even excellent and another 54 percent who rate it as at least sufficient, 60 percent say they make it to the end of the month with at least some difficulty. A complexity in managing the family economy that stems partly from limited income and partly from the difficulty, also psychological, of planning rationally and forward-looking.
“Savers’ behaviors have completely changed. Today people have difficulty making decisions because they are crushed by uncertainty, not because they are unaware or carefree. We need to reconfigure languages and build bridges to get out of immobility and disconnection,” says Sergio Sorgi.
Behind rising prices, retreating pension systems, and the possibility of sliding into economic vulnerability lies a personal, heartfelt, almost intimate concern that overrides general considerations. Things will not go well in perception, but the tendency is to adapt rather than to take action to change future prospects for the better: 47 percent of Italians say they are changing or will change their lifestyles, 58 percent will not take out a supplementary policy, and 71 percent do not yet plan to make investments to count on future annuities.
“Attentions to general issues,” Sorgi continues, “have taken a back seat to those for oneself. There is a strong focus on one’s individual microcontext, which has to fend for itself and save itself given the lack of support capacity of public systems and little trust in alternative strategies. Therefore, insurance intermediaries must combine rigorous identification of needs and wants through counseling with a new relationship capacity. It needs, however, an empathetic, and nonjudgmental relationship.”
One unequivocal finding concerns the loss of trust of Italians, who have no or little trust in pensions (82 percent), the national health care system (76 percent), but also in Banks and Insurance (59 percent).
According to Sorgi, “rampant mistrust puts out the light on any professional relationship and must be mitigated by rebuilding authentic and professional networks of trust. Mistrust is the ‘zero’ service, without which relationships are not activated and bridges of awareness toward the proper use of risk and markets are missing. Trust, however, must be earned. For this, it is necessary for each institution to know its strengths and weaknesses, value them and communicate them properly. Without trust, there is no social and market development.”
But where do Italians’ savings go? In the past year, 64 percent say they have accumulated savings in their checking account and 36 percent have opened up to different savings, investment or capital protection solutions. And who do they compare themselves with for investment solutions and advice? 57% trust the bank advisor, 26% prefer the financial advisor, 12% the insurance agent. There is no shortage of those who consult the web and specialized blogs (19 percent), and even 16 percent admit to choosing how to invest on their own.
“Operators, in phases of uncertainty, are called upon to give decision-making supports rather than answers,” Sorgi adds. “The magic word is capacitation, helping clients to be aware of the choices they make and the outcome of any decision or indecision. It takes, for this, personal, rather than notional, financial education, an accompaniment that cannot be provided by an algorithm but by a live operator.”
– Athora Italy press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
