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Financecommunity Awards: Prelios Innovation receives award for BlinkS, the first Italian NPE digital marketplace

November 26, 2020

Success at the Financecommunity Awards for the Prelios Group and BlinkS, the first Italian digital marketplace – and one of the very first in Europe – for NPE trading. The sixth edition of the Financecommunity Awards named BlinkS the “Best Practice in Credit Innovation”.

The award was received, at the digital award-presentation ceremony held last night, by Gabriella Breno, CEO of Prelios Innovation, the Prelios Group’s Fintech specialist, who said: “The award goes to the whole Group and the people in it who firmly believe in innovation and the realization of ideas. And to the entire Prelios Innovation team: men and women of all ages, with different experiences and from different backgrounds, who made a vital contribution to the development of BlinkS and the success our platform is already achieving, to the point that it has been named as the European benchmark by the EU Commission, the ECB and the EBA.”

Ms Breno added: “BlinkS is still rightly considered a highly innovative start-up, but the first three quarters of 2020 closed with eleven completed transactions for an overall gross book value of more than 110 million euro. In the last few weeks, we have closed a further three transactions and there are more than 12 portfolios on the BlinkS platform. Their sale will be completed by the end of the year, underpinning NPL sales on both the primary and the secondary markets even during the current difficulties caused by the pandemic.” The Prelios Innovation CEO ended her remarks by noting that “on BlinkS, which is obviously a closed platform for institutional investors and banks, there are more than 80 registered members today, among whom many banks and qualified secondary market operators play a leading role.”

The latest estimates on the impact of Covid-19 on the Italian economy “unfortunately indicate an additional 300 billion euro of distressed loans, with the Bank of Italy forecasting a rise of more than 4% in the probability of corporate insolvency, with inevitable repercussions for the Italian financial system,” according to Gabriella Breno. “Italian banks have made great progress in recent years in reducing NPLs, and now need new solutions to ensure the timely and effective management and deconsolidation of distressed loan portfolios. In this context, BlinkS is the best Fintech solution for non-performing exposures. Very shortly we shall be launching a new phase in the platform's development, to turn it into the Italian ecosystem for all players in non-performing loans, both financial and commercial.”