WP 48 | 13 Mutualism and peer monitoring in Italian BCCs

Changes in banking regulation and the banking market have inevitably attenuated the original distinguishing features of cooperative credit banks (BCCs) and exacerbated competition between them and other categories of credit intermediaries. This has been helped by the possibility of operating even with non-members and without sectoral constraints, the expansion of the area of competence, and the numerous merger operations between BCCs. This paper seeks, first, to measure the intensity of member relations that connotes BCCs, highlighting their differences at the territorial and size levels and identifying their main determinants. Second, it aims to assess the role of peer monitoring on credit quality, empirically testing the effect of the degree of mutualism on the main indicators of riskiness.