Excluding bad debts and repos, lending to residents by banche popolari and other banks belonging to their groups grew by 6.8 per cent in 2008, compared with 5.6 per cent for the banking system as a whole. The growth in lending by the five largest banking groups headed by banche popolari was in line with that of the other major and large banks.
By contrast, lending growth was much livelier for the smaller banche popolari (13.9 per cent), also by comparison with other banks of comparable size and with similar operational characteristics (7.2 per cent) including the mutual banks (10.4 per cent).