About Poste Italiane
Poste Italiane is a postal company based out of Italy. In fact, it is the national service provider for the Italian Republic. It is engaged in mail and parcel delivery, logistical services, telecommunications, as well as in insurance facilities. Headquartered in Rome, it carries out operations throughout the domestic territory of the country.
Gruppo Poste Italiane, or the Poste Italiane Group, came into being on 5th May 1862, when the erstwhile Kingdom of Italy called for a nationwide centralized postal service. The Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs was created to set up a network of offices and distribution centers that could send and receive mail as well as telephone calls. Other miscellaneous services offered by these centers included carrying out financial transactions and management of assets.
The Poste Italiane Group has a very wide distribution network across the country, with around 12,800 post offices and 121,000 employees. Up until the 1990s, it was widely seen as unproductive compared to the other European postal service providers. Still, recently the Group has managed to contribute significantly to the Italian social and economic framework. It currently holds financial assets worth 586 billion Euros, with around 35 million customers.
One of the largest companies and employers in Italy, the Group primarily offers services in three main sectors- mail and parcel delivery, financial services, and insurance. Let us take a look at them in detail.
The mail and parcel distribution facilities are covered under the Universal Postal Service. It offers hi-tech mail deliveries as well as hybrid class deliveries for special cases. In 2018, the Group handled about 3 billion mails and 127 million parcels.
In recent years, the advent of e-commerce has caused the demand for parcel deliveries to skyrocket. In order to complement and assist e-commerce logistics, Poste Italiane has also launched PuntoPoste, a service that allows the collection and return of online purchases and pre-paid parcels.
In the field of financial services, the Group operates through its subsidiary entitled BancoPosta. As a unit of the Italian Post Office, BancoPosta acts as a postal savings bank and also allows customers to operate current accounts and apply for mortgage as well as consumer loans. It is also involved in asset management, specifically in mutual investment funds and sovereign bonds.
In the insurance market as well, the Group operates through PosteVita and Poste Assicura, both leading life insurance companies in Italy. PosteVita is the larger of the two and also offers investment and savings products. Poste Assicura is essentially a subsidiary of the former and offers various kinds of insurance in the fields of welfare and healthcare.
