Companies belonging to Industry 4.0 supply chains will have access to a €1 billion "Research, Development and Innovation Ceiling". The objective is to support the growth of local businesses by focusing on innovation, digitalisation and the development of sustainable projects through bespoke financing and supply chain credit. The Digital Innovation Hub Lombardia plays a significant role.

Milan, 31 July 2019 - Supporting companies engaged in innovation and digital transformation processes through specialist consultancy, dedicated financing and supply chain credit is the objective of the memorandum of understanding signed by UBI Banca and Confindustria Lombardia. The agreement represents a further step in the synergy established between the bank and the Confindustria system, and is part of the partnership launched last March within the 'Credito' project initiated by Lombardy's industrialists. This project was created to facilitate access for SMEs—particularly those that have been unable to finance their own growth and development—to banking finance instruments dedicated to investment, especially those aimed at supply chains and Industry 4.0.

The agreement involves significant participation from the Digital Innovation Hub Lombardia, which plays a key role in offering concrete support to companies by launching a joint training programme between UBI Banca and the industrialists' association on how to evaluate corporate investment projects, credit, and the incentive instruments offered by Impresa 4.0. The collaboration aims to enhance "Industry 4.0 Supply Chains" in order to improve the ability to provide credit to the companies that are part of them. With this objective, Confindustria Lombardia and the Bank, with the support of DIH Lombardia, will examine the needs of the entities belonging to industrial supply chains, to which they will tailor a specific credit offering. The partnership will allow companies to access the Research, Development and Innovation Ceiling of €1 billion through a banking offer featuring medium and long-term loans and leasing.

Great attention is paid to social responsibility as a competitiveness strategy: projects oriented towards sustainability are the target of investment analyses. These are entrepreneurial initiatives aimed at reducing environmental impact, maintaining or creating new jobs, establishing public-private partnerships, improving welfare levels and contributing, through dedicated projects, to the support of disadvantaged areas or those affected by natural disasters.

"Corporate competitiveness and innovation in the production sector are the objectives of the work initiated with the Confindustria system at a national level, and the agreement signed with Confindustria Lombardia falls within this context," states Frederik Geertman, Chief Commercial Officer and Deputy General Manager of UBI Banca. "Our bank provides a network of specialists connected to the Digital Innovation Hub who are competent in the tools of the National Industry 4.0 Plan and in financing transformation projects, including through subsidised funds and access to the capital market. As UBI Banca, we are playing our part by working in close synergy with the key players in the local economic system."

"Today we are adding a new element to Confindustria Lombardia's 'Credito' project," declares Marco Bonometti, President of Confindustria Lombardia, "a project created in the interest of our SMEs and the Lombardy regions. Following the framework agreement signed on 4 March with the five main banking institutions, this is the third bilateral agreement signed with UBI to give operational effect to the framework agreement. With UBI, we have focused on supporting investment in innovation and digitalisation, two competitive levers that are no longer optional but mandatory for businesses. For this reason, the role of the Digital Innovation Hub Lombardia will be central to the process of evaluating and supporting companies. We want to support Lombardy's industrial supply chains, which are our strategic asset. Faced with technological change, we want to enable all companies to meet this important challenge, in order to defend the competitiveness and growth of our production. To do this, companies, especially smaller ones, must be enabled to make the necessary investments, creating new, higher-performing products and adopting new, digitised, more modern and more competitive processes," concluded Bonometti.

"The growth of companies in our region sees digital solutions as an enabling factor," declares Gianluigi Viscardi, President of DIH Lombardia, "for this reason, the agreement signed today offers an additional tool to be deployed in the portfolio of the Digital Innovation Hub Lombardia and the local branches that comprise it. I have always been convinced that the ability to work as a system represents an added value for our SMEs, also and above all as a lever to face the challenges of digital transformation," concludes Viscardi.

Attachments

• PR UBI Confindustria Lombardia Agreement_31July2019.pdf