In line with the strategic guidelines set out in the Strategic Plan, the Group’s activities are divided into four Strategic Business Units (also referred to as operating segments in Poste Italiane’s financial statements): Mail, Parcels and Distribution; Financial Services; Insurance Services and Payments and Mobile.
Poste Italiane’s results exceeded expectations in 2023, with revenue of €12 billion up over 5% year on year and record EBIT of €2.62 billion, more than doubling the figure for 2017. This performance was achieved thanks to the Group’s diversified, resilient and sustainable business model, enabling the Company to respond proactively to the continually changing macroeconomic environment, and the delivery of cost efficiencies against a backdrop of rising inflation.
The Group confirmed its strategic role at the heart of the lives of citizens, businesses and institutions, pursuing the creation of long-term value for the public benefit and contributing to economic growth, with the cumulative impact on Italian GDP over the period between 2018 and 2023 amounting to approximately €76 billion.
We have gone beyond that and established ourselves as the largest phygital platform in Italy, thriving on the integration of multiple touchpoints and creating an omnichannel ecosystem where each portion of the platform complements the other. We have invested in digital, data and our businesses, with our vast client base at the centre.
With this new strategic plan we are reshaping our business to seize substantial growth: with the New Commercial Service Model, designed to optimize the value of our platform and the logistics transformation to evolve into a future-proof network and preserve the financial sustainability of our Mail and Parcel Business.
In Financial Services by evolving our client segmentation allocating them to specialized financial advisors, we will be sure to better cover all our client needs by adapting the network to them rather than asking them to adapt to us.
In Insurance Services our focus is on keeping steady growth in the Life Investment & Pension business and leveraging increasing demand and low customer penetration in the Protection business.
Postepay Services has created an open payment ecosystem with payments at its core, adding home services such as fibre and energy and leveraging on Poste Italiane’s omnichannel platform.
Financial Services
Poste Italiane plays a leading role in the distribution of savings and financial products, thanks to our distribution network and the brand’s long-standing reputation for dependability.
We are the sole distributor on behalf of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti of Postal Savings products – Savings Books and Interest-bearing Certificates – and offer our customers innovative payment solutions, current account services, investment and asset management products, insurance solutions and third-party consumer credit products.
Total gross revenue from Financial Services (including intersegment revenue) amounted to €6.1 billion in 2023, marking growth of 5.8% year on year. This was driven by net interest income and Postal Savings products, which performed well in the fourth quarter 8 of 2023.
Total financial assets (TFA) rose further to €581 billion, with net retail inflows totalling €1.2 billion.
Insurance services
Insurance services are provided by the Poste Vita group (a wholly owned subsidiary of Poste Italiane), which offers customers a range of solutions designed to meet demand for supplementary pensions, insurance investment products and personal and property protection.
The Poste Vita group recorded a positive performance, with inflows again outperforming the market and a low lapse rate against a challenging backdrop.
Gross Life written premiums totalled approximately €18 billion (up 4.8% year on year compared with 2022) and life revenue amounted to €1.5 billion.
P&C products also recorded a very strong performance, as the development of services continued, in line with the planned diversification of the insurance offering. Revenue from this segment rose 34.7% compared with the previous year to €92 million, driven by growth in gross written premiums to €581 million (up 48.2% year on year compared with 2022) and the consolidation of Net Insurance, whose acquisition was completed in the first half of 2023, with the aim of further accelerating the Group’s growth and earnings in the protection business.
Annual Financial Report 2023
Poste Italiane’s results exceeded expectations in 2023, with revenue of €12 billion up over 5% year on year and record EBIT of €2.62 billion, more than doubling the figure for 2017. This performance was achieved thanks to the Group’s diversified, resilient and sustainable business model, enabling the Company to respond proactively to the continually changing macroeconomic environment, and the delivery of cost efficiencies against a backdrop of rising inflation.
The Group confirmed its strategic role at the heart of the lives of citizens, businesses and institutions, pursuing the creation of long-term value for the public benefit and contributing to economic growth, with the cumulative impact on Italian GDP over the period between 2018 and 2023 amounting to approximately €76 billion.
We have gone beyond that and established ourselves as the largest phygital platform in Italy, thriving on the integration of multiple touchpoints and creating an omnichannel ecosystem where each portion of the platform complements the other. We have invested in digital, data and our businesses, with our vast client base at the centre.
With this new strategic plan we are reshaping our business to seize substantial growth: with the New Commercial Service Model, designed to optimize the value of our platform and the logistics transformation to evolve into a future-proof network and preserve the financial sustainability of our Mail and Parcel Business.
In Financial Services by evolving our client segmentation allocating them to specialized financial advisors, we will be sure to better cover all our client needs by adapting the network to them rather than asking them to adapt to us.
In Insurance Services our focus is on keeping steady growth in the Life Investment & Pension business and leveraging increasing demand and low customer penetration in the Protection business.
Postepay Services has created an open payment ecosystem with payments at its core, adding home services such as fibre and energy and leveraging on Poste Italiane’s omnichannel platform.
Mail Parcel and Distribution
The strategic Busness Unit, in addition to its mail, parcel and logistics management activities, also includes those relating to the sales network, Post Offices and the Corporate functions of Poste Italiane SpA, which also support the other sectors of the Group.
Poste Italiane is Italy’s largest logistics provider, able to take advantage of the opportunities linked to the growth in e-commerce, thanks to our extensive payments and digital expertise.
This segment, which also provides Italy’s Universal Postal Service, has always formed a key part of Poste Italiane’s identity and includes mail and parcel delivery, logistics and 5 express delivery services supplied through an integrated network that is unique in terms of size and coverage.
The successful industrial transformation, our investment and the innovation process embarked on in recent years enabled the Group to sort approximately 2.3 billion letters in 2023, deliver approximately 256 million parcels and handle more than 1 million parcels per day.
The Mail, Parcels and Distribution segment beat previous expectations to achieve breakeven in 2023, generating revenue of €3.7 billion, up 2.6% year-on-year.
Letter post revenue of €2.1 billion was up 0.2% year on year, driven by repricing initiatives and an improved underlying product mix, offsetting the 6.2% year-on-year decline in volumes.
Parcel revenue of €1.4 billion (unchanged with respect to the previous year) reflects volume growth, above all in the B2C segment (with 203 million items delivered in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 12.4%), and a particularly strong performance in the fourth quarter, when volume growth in the B2C segment reached 17.1% compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The progressive transformation of the logistics and delivery networks continued during the year, with the aim of improving efficiency. The Joint Delivery Model (the service model that also provides for afternoon and weekend deliveries) is now fully operational, with postmen and women delivering over 90 million parcels in 2023. This marks yearon-year growth of 26.9% compared with the 71 million parcels delivered in the previous year.
There was a further increase in the number of pick-up and drop-off points available to customers, with a physical network that currently includes 28,500 post offices and collection points such as tobacconists and lockers offering a non-stop 24-hour, 7-day service.
Poste Italiane has also continued to invest in modernisation of the vehicle fleet, making it more environmentally friendly with the introduction of hybrid and electric vehicles: at the end of December 2023, the Group operated around 26,200 low-emission vehicles (of which approximately 5,800 are electric), including three- and four-wheeled scooters and cars.
The aim of these initiatives is to arrive at 27,800 low-emission vehicles by 2024, cutting emissions by 40% by the same year and helping Poste Italiane achieve our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.
Payment and Mobile*
The Strategic Business Unit encompasses payment management and payment cards services, also carried out through the LIS point-of-sale network, as well as mobile and fixed-line telephony, electricity and gas services.
Poste Italiane is one of Italy’s leading payment system providers, exploiting the Group’s integrated multichannel distribution platform, using latest-generation digital infrastructure and a physical network consisting of approximately 64,000 contact points, including post offices and sub-post offices, that offer the Group’s services.
PostePay SpA, the Group company specialising in the development and processing of mobile and digital payments, is the leader in payment systems, having issued approximately 30 million cards.
To speed up and drive a successful transition from cash to digital payments in Italy, the company has invested in the development of innovative solutions. One example is Codice PostePay, the digital service that allows shoppers to pay for their purchases using just their mobile phone and merchants to collect payments using a QR code, without the need for a POS terminal.
The Payments and Mobile segment continued to see year-on-year revenue growth in 2023, with the figure of €1.4 billion up by a solid 27.5%. The increase was further driven by the new payment solutions offered by the Group, the growing volume of both online 7 and offline transactions and the integration of the newly acquired LIS, which generated additional revenue of €184 million, accelerating the Group’s omnichannel strategy.
The new energy offering, launched in February 2023, had attracted approximately 500,000 customers and the number of e-commerce transactions continued to grow, with 706.7 million transactions in 2023 (up 18.1% year on year).
The strategic Busness Unit, in addition to its mail, parcel and logistics management activities, also includes those relating to the sales network, Post Offices and the Corporate functions of Poste Italiane SpA, which also support the other sectors of the Group.
Poste Italiane is Italy’s largest logistics provider, able to take advantage of the opportunities linked to the growth in e-commerce, thanks to our extensive payments and digital expertise.
This segment, which also provides Italy’s Universal Postal Service, has always formed a key part of Poste Italiane’s identity and includes mail and parcel delivery, logistics and 5 express delivery services supplied through an integrated network that is unique in terms of size and coverage.
The successful industrial transformation, our investment and the innovation process embarked on in recent years enabled the Group to sort approximately 2.3 billion letters in 2023, deliver approximately 256 million parcels and handle more than 1 million parcels per day.
The Mail, Parcels and Distribution segment beat previous expectations to achieve breakeven in 2023, generating revenue of €3.7 billion, up 2.6% year-on-year.
Letter post revenue of €2.1 billion was up 0.2% year on year, driven by repricing initiatives and an improved underlying product mix, offsetting the 6.2% year-on-year decline in volumes.
Parcel revenue of €1.4 billion (unchanged with respect to the previous year) reflects volume growth, above all in the B2C segment (with 203 million items delivered in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 12.4%), and a particularly strong performance in the fourth quarter, when volume growth in the B2C segment reached 17.1% compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The progressive transformation of the logistics and delivery networks continued during the year, with the aim of improving efficiency. The Joint Delivery Model (the service model that also provides for afternoon and weekend deliveries) is now fully operational, with postmen and women delivering over 90 million parcels in 2023. This marks yearon-year growth of 26.9% compared with the 71 million parcels delivered in the previous year.
There was a further increase in the number of pick-up and drop-off points available to customers, with a physical network that currently includes 28,500 post offices and collection points such as tobacconists and lockers offering a non-stop 24-hour, 7-day service.
Poste Italiane has also continued to invest in modernisation of the vehicle fleet, making it more environmentally friendly with the introduction of hybrid and electric vehicles: at the end of December 2023, the Group operated around 26,200 low-emission vehicles (of which approximately 5,800 are electric), including three- and four-wheeled scooters and cars.
The aim of these initiatives is to arrive at 27,800 low-emission vehicles by 2024, cutting emissions by 40% by the same year and helping Poste Italiane achieve our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.
Payment and Mobile*
The Strategic Business Unit encompasses payment management and payment cards services, also carried out through the LIS point-of-sale network, as well as mobile and fixed-line telephony, electricity and gas services.
Poste Italiane is one of Italy’s leading payment system providers, exploiting the Group’s integrated multichannel distribution platform, using latest-generation digital infrastructure and a physical network consisting of approximately 64,000 contact points, including post offices and sub-post offices, that offer the Group’s services.
PostePay SpA, the Group company specialising in the development and processing of mobile and digital payments, is the leader in payment systems, having issued approximately 30 million cards.
To speed up and drive a successful transition from cash to digital payments in Italy, the company has invested in the development of innovative solutions. One example is Codice PostePay, the digital service that allows shoppers to pay for their purchases using just their mobile phone and merchants to collect payments using a QR code, without the need for a POS terminal.
The Payments and Mobile segment continued to see year-on-year revenue growth in 2023, with the figure of €1.4 billion up by a solid 27.5%. The increase was further driven by the new payment solutions offered by the Group, the growing volume of both online 7 and offline transactions and the integration of the newly acquired LIS, which generated additional revenue of €184 million, accelerating the Group’s omnichannel strategy.
The new energy offering, launched in February 2023, had attracted approximately 500,000 customers and the number of e-commerce transactions continued to grow, with 706.7 million transactions in 2023 (up 18.1% year on year).
* On 20 March 2024, with the presentation of the new 2024/2028 Strategic Plan, the Strategic Business Unit was renamed PostePay Services.
Financial Services
Poste Italiane plays a leading role in the distribution of savings and financial products, thanks to our distribution network and the brand’s long-standing reputation for dependability.
We are the sole distributor on behalf of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti of Postal Savings products – Savings Books and Interest-bearing Certificates – and offer our customers innovative payment solutions, current account services, investment and asset management products, insurance solutions and third-party consumer credit products.
Total gross revenue from Financial Services (including intersegment revenue) amounted to €6.1 billion in 2023, marking growth of 5.8% year on year. This was driven by net interest income and Postal Savings products, which performed well in the fourth quarter 8 of 2023.
Total financial assets (TFA) rose further to €581 billion, with net retail inflows totalling €1.2 billion.
Insurance services
Insurance services are provided by the Poste Vita group (a wholly owned subsidiary of Poste Italiane), which offers customers a range of solutions designed to meet demand for supplementary pensions, insurance investment products and personal and property protection.
The Poste Vita group recorded a positive performance, with inflows again outperforming the market and a low lapse rate against a challenging backdrop.
Gross Life written premiums totalled approximately €18 billion (up 4.8% year on year compared with 2022) and life revenue amounted to €1.5 billion.
P&C products also recorded a very strong performance, as the development of services continued, in line with the planned diversification of the insurance offering. Revenue from this segment rose 34.7% compared with the previous year to €92 million, driven by growth in gross written premiums to €581 million (up 48.2% year on year compared with 2022) and the consolidation of Net Insurance, whose acquisition was completed in the first half of 2023, with the aim of further accelerating the Group’s growth and earnings in the protection business.
Annual Financial Report 2023
