UniCredit, with the University, will retrain another 50 thousand bankers

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The bankers of the UniCredit group have been and will be involved in one of the major skills retraining projects in the world of credit, consistently with the enhancement of training, shared with the unions in the latest renewal of the national collective labor agreement (ABI). Not only in Italy, where 22 thousand workers were trained in the two-year period 2022-2023, but throughout Europe where in the next two years, between 50 and 60 thousand more people will enter the upkilling and reskilling paths. All thanks to the group’s University which was launched in Italy in 2022 in collaboration with Luiss, and was then developed for the almost 80 thousand employees in the 13 countries in which UniCredit is present. In Italy the University is «very branched out across the territory where there are 7 regional hubs that allow everyone to be able to follow the courses, even in person: we have chosen that half of the hours take place in the classroom and that we meet in person because we believe it has value”, explains the chief administrative officer, Ilaria Dalla Riva. From year to year the project has evolved and now «there are more than 300 employees who have been trained to carry out the courses, while depending on the specific disciplines we collaborate with the top players in the academic world», continues Dalla Riva.

The training model that integrates soft and hard skills

In our country alone, in the last two years, as mentioned, 22 thousand workers participated in University courses, 2 million hours provided, more than 45 per person. If the ambition is “to be the bank of the future of Europe”, as Andrea Orcel, the group CEO of UniCredit, said yesterday at the inauguration of the third academic year in Turin, the project can only be achieved “by offering people professional training of the highest quality.” What allowed the development of the path was the digital learning system which guarantees, among other things, access to over 70 thousand training contents, peer to peer learning initiatives focused on the skills that are required for the future: «Ours is an integrated training that takes into account soft skills and all topics related to diversity, inclusion, antifragility, as well as ESG factors, data, digitalisation or risk: in Italy we have trained on lines of defense in the field risk more than 2 thousand banks”, says Dalla Riva.

The education ecosystem

In Orcel’s vision, to be the bank of the future, UniCredit will have to put «employees in a position to give their best in their assigned roles. We are doing this through the University, an innovative and pioneering initiative in the banking sector. Training is an extraordinarily powerful tool for creating better outcomes.” «Training the talent of each of our people is the main lever for growth for us, enhancing the difference that everyone brings to the group», adds Dalla Riva, starting from the awareness that it is necessary to bring out everyone’s full potential. Even on a social level. This is why UniCredit University has become one of the pillars of the group’s investment plan on the education front. A very broad ecosystem, which is aimed at all stakeholders, with the UniCredit University dedicated to the group’s bankers, the Banking Academy dedicated to customers and others, to offer free training on banking, finance, digitalisation, innovation and UniCredit Foundation which operates in the third sector to combat school dropout, facilitate the school-work transition, promote access to university and support research for young Europeans