Poste Italiane’s Integrated Report is now in its third edition, continuing its objective of sharing the Group’s sustainability journey with stakeholders in a clear and comprehensive manner, highlighting all the activities undertaken to support the country’s growth and the creation of shared value.

This document, for instance, represents a fundamental tool to illustrate the interaction between the external context, the strategy, the business model and the forms of financial and non-financial capital involved in the process of creating value and to account for the performance achieved in economic, environmental and social terms.

For Poste Italiane, the Integrated Report is not only a tool for effective reporting to stakeholders, but it is the result of adopting an integrated approach to business management, “integrated thinking” that sees the coexistence of financial assessments and sustainability impacts in business decisions. This approach is well represented by Poste Italiane’s value creation process, which is underpinned by the business model.

At the basis of this path of integrating sustainability into the business there are a series of strategic choices, identified in the interest of both the Company and the various stakeholders, and which focus on investment in the main forms of capital, such as: financial, human, physical-structural, intellectual, social-relational and natural. These capitals represent the assets on which the sustainable success of the Company is based, but also on which it impacts with its activities, contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

For this reason, for the first time, the correlation between performance and capital is always represented in the document in order to clearly explain how the business model contributes to the creation of shared value. Accordingly with this aim, starting from this year, we wanted to represent the output of the shared value creation process, which made it possible to achieve many rewarding results that are illustrated in Chapter 2 “Highlights”.

In this regard, emphasis was placed on the impact of the emergency generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has undoubtedly affected the Group’s activities and operations. Poste Italiane was able to deal with this situation by implementing initiatives to manage the health emergency. In order to allow a more immediate visualisation of the activities carried out and their impacts, in Chapter 5 “Risks and Opportunities”, a linking table that summarises all the measures carried out, the capital needed to carry them out and the Pillars in which they are more extensively dealt with, has been included. Additionally, throughout this paper, content related to the management of Covid-19 is highlighted by this infographic:

In spite of the health emergency, Poste Italiane has continued along the path of gradually integrating the culture of sustainability within the strategies, actions and decisions taken by the Group. As evidence of the progress achieved and in order to highlight the commitment of all those involved in promoting change, a specific section showing the development of the Group’s sustainability path and the awards and recognition obtained in the ESG area has been included in the Integrated Report.

On a methodological level, aware of its responsibility towards stakeholders for correct reporting, the Company has decided to go beyond the current regulatory framework and strengthen its reporting model by adhering to the most important international reference frameworks. This choice stems from the Group’s desire for transparency and accountability, as well as the objective of promptly intercepting new trends in non-financial reporting.

Consistent with the previous year, the 2020 Integrated Report includes the Consolidated Non-Financial Statement (NFS) identified in chapter 9 of the Report on Operations. The NFS was prepared in accordance with the requirements of articles 3 and 4 of Legislative Decree 254/2016 and to the “Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Standards” defined by GRI – Global Reporting Initiative (hereinafter “GRI Standards”) according to the “in accordance – Core” option. In chapter 9, paragraph “Reporting standards and policies”, a connecting table that indicates the information content required by the Decree and its positioning within the Integrated Report is included, with the aim of making it easier to find all non-financial information. In addition, such content is also noted, to make it easily identifiable, by this infographic: 

The Integrated Report has been prepared by applying the Integrated Reporting framework published by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). Also, the guidelines provided by ESMA1 and CONSOB2 on reporting for the year 2020 were fundamental to the preparation of the document, which indicated the priorities for non-financial reporting in a period characterised by a health emergency. In this regard, both institutions reiterated the need to continue actions to combat climate change and transparency on the approaches adopted on this front. In line with this, the Integrated Report, again this year, describes how risks and opportunities associated with the Group’s activities are managed in accordance with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) accounting for climate-related risks and opportunities.The reporting process therefore observes the requirements of compliance, external communication and positioning in the Sustainability Indexes in which Poste Italiane is involved.

The Group also proves itself to pay particular attention to the growing demand for information from investors regarding the assessment of companies according to ESG criteria. For this, the indicators in the 2020 Integrated Report are reclassified according to SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board) standards. Poste Italiane is also committed to taking part in the creation of a shared and universal framework for non-financial reporting. To this end, the document also includes the indicators related to “material ESG metrics” presented at the World Economic Forum in January 2020 in the document “Towards Common Metrics and Consistent Reporting of Sustainable Value Creation” updated in September of the same year.

Moreover, in order to identify the contribution of Poste Italiane to achieving the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a link with the targets established by the Group was made, the GRI Standards indicators and the SDGs, following the indications in the document “SDG Compass” developed by GRI, UN Global Compact and WBCSD (the World Business Council for Sustainable Development), further supplemented by an analysis of each Goal and the related 169 targets associated to them.

In addition to the Integrated Report, the other documents that make up this Annual Report are: the consolidated financial statements of the Poste Italiane Group, Poste Italiane’s separate financial statements, including BancoPosta RFC’s Separate Report, the related attestations pursuant to art. 154 bis paragraph 5 of Legislative Decree no. 58/1998 and the reports of the Board of Statutory Auditors and the Independent Auditors, referring to the financial year ended 31 December 2020, and the Report on Corporate Governance and Ownership Structure published on the Company’s website, in the Governance section, which is to be considered an integral part and to which reference should be made for further details on the Corporate Governance structure.

The current Annual Financial Report, approved by Poste Italiane SpA’s Board of Directors on March 24th 2021, will be made available to the public, within the deadlines required pursuant to current laws and regulations (i.e. by 30 April 2021), on the following website: https://www.posteitaliane.it/en/reports.html#/.

1 ESMA document on European common supervisory priorities for 2020 “European common enforcement priorities for 2020 annual financial reports”
2 CONSOB Attention Notice no. 1/21 of 16 February 2021.