Andrea Beltratti is in an evangelical mood. The chairman of the management board of Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank by market value, wants Italians to learn basic financial concepts such as hedging and the difference between real and nominal returns.
His idea is that Italians would then have a better understanding of how financial markets work, would invest their savings more effectively and as a result would learn to respect, appreciate and ultimately love bankers.
To that end, Mr Beltratti, who is also a professor at Milan’s Bocconi University and has a PhD from Yale, dreamt up the Savings Museum in Turin. The five rooms filled with videos, texts, movie clips and custom-built video games opened in May in a former branch of Intesa Sanpaolo.