By Sergio Silvestri, Director of the European School of Banking Management

2017 was a very busy year for us: packed with activities, courses, master's programs, in-depth studies, and updates, but also a harbinger of many new developments and many new clients. A year that saw three major themes take center stage in our work: the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, privacy, and cybersecurity.

The first represents the core business of our School: for years, we have been providing anti-money laundering training and refresher courses, so much so that our business school has a division entirely dedicated to this, the Scuola Italiana Antiriciclaggio (Italian Anti-Money Laundering School). The introduction in Italy of the implementing decree of the Fourth European Directive has led us to expand this strand of training, given the need for immediate updating and compliance by those subject to the obligations.

Privacy and cybersecurity, however, were somewhat new to us. In light of the first cyber attacks, we organized two conferences on the topic at the beginning of the year, one in Caltanissetta and the other in Bari. The topic's extreme relevance and the need for training that emerged on several occasions subsequently prompted us to organize a dedicated master's program, ultimately leading us to decide to focus our opening conference of the new academic year on the issue of cyber risks.

The most significant development closing out 2017 is the signing of the Framework Agreement with the nascent ICCREA Banking Group. This agreement will allow the group's 2500 employees to choose our business school for their training and will also extend to the future banking group resulting from the cooperative credit reform. With the 154 pre-adhering BCCs (following mergers in recent months), the group will have 2593 branches throughout Italy, ranking it as the third-largest banking group in terms of branches, and 20600 employees.

2017 saw us strengthen our relationships with the School's long-standing clients, who continue to believe in us and in the quality of our organization and the training we provide. Our commitment to our work has been rewarded by the arrival of new and important clients, including UBI Banca Group, Chaabi Bank du Maroc, Banca di Ancona e Falconara Marittima Credito Cooperativo, BCC Terra d'Otranto, BCC di San Marzano di San Giuseppe, and BCC di Cassano delle Murge e Tolve. Our heartfelt thanks go to all of you for your years of trust, for believing in us, our professionalism, and our experience in banking training. Thanks in part to you, we have achieved important goals, and for you, we will continue to improve.

Now, however, the time has come to look to 2018, a year that will allow us to reap the fruits of what we've sown in recent months. The prospects are good: in January, we'll inaugurate the new 2017/2018 academic year and organize a roundtable discussion on cybersecurity with the support of Kaspersky, the world's leading cybersecurity software developer. This will be the occasion to celebrate, together with all of you, our first 20 years of business.

In the meantime, let's take advantage of the Christmas holidays to enjoy a few days of rest, and then get back to work (even) more motivated and more enthusiastic than ever.
Happy Holidays!