The Bank of Italy has just introduced this survey to collect and rationalize detailed data on bad loan characteristics, on the type of guarantees used to back them and on the status of recovery procedures. We have indeed found that many banks are making insufficient use of modern data management and processing technologies, particularly with respect to loans handled directly by their legal departments.
Inflation over the past 12 months is at the lower bound of the target range of 1 to 3 percent. In contrast, expectations are closer to the midpoint of the range, although they have recently declined slightly. We also look at inflation expectations over the long term, which are also within the target range.