ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Families and small businesses continue to pay high rates to access credit, while the savings deposited in the bank are rewarded with increasingly lower returns. ‘In March 2026 consumer credit averaged 10.34%, loans to small and medium-sized enterprises amounted to 4.18%, while current accounts made only 0.29%.’ This is what emerges from an analysis of the Centro Studi di Unimpresa, according to which the reduction of interest rates decided by the European Central Bank (which raised them from 2 to 2.25% only last week) quickly transmitted to the banking collection, but only to a limited and selective extent at the cost of loans. ‘The heavier figure concerns consumer credit. In March 2026, the Taeg (global effective annual rate) applied to loans for households stood at 10.34%, substantially unchanged from 10.50% in January 2025. In more than a year the decline was only 0.16 percentage points, despite the progressive slowdown in European monetary policy.’ After falling below 10% in December 2025, the cost of consumer credit quickly returned over the double digit in the first months of 2026. ‘Even the mortgage market showed only a partial transmission of BCE cuts,’ explains Unimpresa. The Taeg on loans for the purchase of housing stood at 3,81% in March 2026.
After an initial phase of slight reduction, the mortgages recorded a gradual rise in the course of 2025, reaching 3,87% between January and February 2026, before a slight retraction in the following month. On the business front, ‘the cost of credit remains significantly higher for smaller companies’, notes Unimpresa. Loans of up to one million euros, the main source of funding for SMEs, recorded an average rate of 4.18% to March 2026. After reaching a minimum of 3.95% in August 2025, ‘the cost of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises has returned to rise in the second part of the year, closing the first quarter of 2026 on higher levels than the minimum recorded’. The conditions applied to larger firms are much more favourable. Loans over a million euros recorded an average rate of 2.99%, less than about 1.2 percentage points compared to that paid by SMEs. A differential confirming that ‘the corporate dimension continues to be a determining factor in access to more advantageous credit conditions’. As regards the collection, the total deposits of households and enterprises offered an average remuneration of 0.65%, down from 0.85% in January 2025.
Even lower the performance of current accounts, down to 0.29%, close to the minimum levels recorded in the course of 2025 and below 0.41% detected at the beginning of last year. Bonded deposits have also seen their profitability reduced significantly. In March 2026, Unimpresa explains, ‘they made on average 2,45%, against 3,14% of January 2025, with a decrease of 0,69 percentage points in just over a year’. The comparison between how much the banks recognize to the savers and what they ask for families and enterprises highlights still very wide margins. Between 0.29% of current accounts and 10.34% of consumer credit, there is a difference of more than 10 percentage points. The spread between the average remuneration of deposits (0.65%) and the cost of lending to pmes (4.18%) is 3.53 percentage points, while for large enterprises it stands at 2.34 points. ‘A dynamic which is now consolidated is confirmed: the drop in official rates has produced immediate benefits for banks on the side of the collection, but it has not been translated into a similar lightening of the cost of credit for families and small enterprises. The reduction of the yields recognised to the savers has been rapid and generalized, while the one applied to the loans has been slower, selective and incomplete, maintaining high the weight of the interests on consumers and the productive system’ comments the vice-president of Unimpresa, Giuseppe Spadafora.
According to the Centro Studi di Unimpresa, which analyzed statistical data of the Bank of Italy, in March 2026 the cost of money in Italy showed a picture still deeply unbalanced. The rates on loans to households and enterprises remained high, while the remuneration of deposits continued to fall or stagnate on minimum levels. The spread between what banks have cashed on loans and what they have returned to the savers has reached levels that are not justified in the trend of monetary policy of the ECB, which since 2024 has started a phase of progressive loosening, then interrupted last week when the cost of money was brought from 2.25%. The most exemplary data was credit for household consumption, which in March 2026 marked a Taeg of 10,34%. It was a substantially immovable value for the whole period observed: in January 2025 it was at 10.50%, it touched a minimum relative to December 2025 to 9,97%, and then went up to March 2026 beyond the threshold of 10%. In fifteen months the overall change was only -0.16 percentage points, compared with a much more consistent BCE rate drop. Households who have made use of consumer credit – personal loans, purchase loans, fifth-party grants – continued to pay double-digit rates regardless of the direction of monetary policy.
The housing loans showed a different evolution but not without criticality. The Taeg fell from 3.50% of January 2025 to a minimum of 3.54% in March 2025, then gradually up to 3,87% between January and February 2026, and attested to 3,81% in March 2026. A paradoxical trend: while the ECB cut rates, the mortgages saw a rise in the course of 2025, highlighting how the transmission of monetary policy to the credit market to families remained partial and selective. On the business front, current accounts and rotational loans recorded a rate of 4.05% to March 2026, down from 4.94% of January 2025: a fall of almost one percentage point in fifteen months, the most significant among all the active items detected. Funds for SMEs – those up to a million euros, representing the main credit channel for small and medium-sized enterprises – have marked a rate of 4.18% in March 2026, rising compared to the minimum of 3.95% recorded in August 2025. After a descent until summer, the rate on the pmi reversed the course in the second part of the year, closing March 2026 on levels above the minimum point of about 0.23 points. Loans over a million euros – those for large enterprises – have benefited from more favourable conditions, with a rate of 2.99% to March 2026, almost 1.2 percentage points less than paid by the SMEs for similar operations.
The gap between large and small enterprises in the credit cost remained structurally broad, confirming a segmentation of the market that rewards the company size regardless of the overall rate trend. The deposit front has completed the picture with even more unbalanced data. Total deposits of households and non-financial companies made 0.65% in March 2026, slightly up from 0.62% in November and December 2025, but still well below 0.85% in January 2025. The current accounts – the main banking collection tool, on which the daily liquidity of families and enterprises lies – paid only 0.29% in March 2026, a value that touched its historical minimum in the period observed in July and August 2025 with 0.27%, and which never exceeded 0.41% recorded at the beginning of 2025. In fourteen months, the remuneration of current accounts has therefore reduced by 0.12 percentage points, descending to zero in a constant and without significant changes in trend. The only binding deposits, which immobilize liquidity for a predetermined period, offered a more significant yield, equal to 2,45% in March 2026, but in marked downfall compared to 3,14% in January 2025: in just over a year they lost 0,69 percentage points, the sharpest contraction among all the passive items detected.
The punctual comparison between active and passive rates in March 2026 returned the spread measure of which banks continued to benefit. Those who deposited money in current account received 0.29%, while those who asked for a consumer loan paid 10.34%: a difference of more than 10 percentage points. Those who turned on a mortgage paid 3.81% in the face of a return on the bonded deposits of 2.45%, with a spread of 1,36 points. SMEs paid 4.18% on ordinary loans against 0.65% average deposits, with a spread of 3.53 points. Large enterprises, even in a more favourable position, paid 2.99% on loans in the face of a remuneration on deposits of just 0.65%, with a spread of 2.34 points. In all segments, without exception, the cost of borrowed money has largely exceeded the remuneration of money deposited, in a framework where the bank margins have remained solid regardless of the direction of monetary policy.
The overall picture has confirmed a structural dynamic that the monthly data has made evident: the descent of Bce rates has produced asymmetric effects. On the side of the collection, the banks quickly reduced the remuneration of the deposits, bringing the current accounts to 0.29% already from the second half of 2025. On the application side, the transmission remained partial, slow and differentiated: more favourable for large enterprises, less for SMEs, almost nothing for household consumption credit. The banking spread, in other words, has expanded to benefit institutions and to the detriment of retail customers and small businesses, precisely when monetary policy should have brought a general lightening of the cost of money.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
