L’EVOLUZIONE DELL’ARBITRO BANCARIO FINANZIARIO [The development of ADR mechanisms in Banking & Financial Disputes]

The Italian Banking Ombudsman (Arbitro Bancario Finanziario – ABF) is a permanent alternative dispute resolution board managed by the Bank of Italy and mainly financed by banks and financial intermediaries. Its task consists in applying the law to banking disputes, so as to roughly anticipate the outcome of an otherwise lengthy trial before a civil judge. Many commentators, however, believe that the ABF, instead of (and more than simply) deciding secundum iustitiam, ought to act as a sort of ancillary arm of the Supervisory Authority, completing its regulatory mission. This essay, authored by an academic who has served from 2013 to 2019 as an arbitrator within the Bank of Italy’s ADR board, witnesses the mechanism’s recent developments and retrenchments, focusing on their impact on the substantive rights of the parties and related procedural guarantees. It is also analyzed the role of economic reasoning in interpreting extremely technical rules such as the banking ones (eg. in determining the total cost of credit), having regard to their European common matrix.