, ireland and luxembourg – this share rises to over one - third. • in addition, small and medium - sized banks could be those suffering the most from the economic consequences of the pandemic. could this create an unprecedented “ too - many - to - fail ” problem, difficult to address within the current framework? a recent bank of italy analysis confirms that the effect of the pandemic on italian banks ’ credit risk exposure could be higher among less significant institutions than among significant ones, due to the different sectoral composition of the loan portfolios of the two groups. • national insolvency procedures are very heterogeneous across eu member states. for example, some countries have special regimes applicable only to banks, while others have ordinary insolvency regimes applicable to all kinds of firms ; some implement judicial - based frameworks while others administrative - based frameworks. this variety creates a level - playing - field problem, as creditors and depositors may be treated differently across the union, thus fuelling financial fragmentation. • a greater degree of harmonisation of the national insolvency procedures for non - systemic banks is therefore necessary to strengthen the banking union and the single market. how, then, can we bring this about? and, most importantly, how should any new eu framework be shaped? • the main objective of any revision of the current framework should be to avoid disorderly piecemeal liquidations, with the consequent unnecessary destruction of value. in europe this objective is actively pursued in the field of insolvency procedures for non - financial firms, for which harmonisation efforts are ongoing. it should also be pursued, a fortiori, in the banking field, where it is crucial not only to avoid destroying value, but also to preserve public confidence in the banking system. • disorderly liquidations may have instead become more likely in recent years, due to several factors. technological progress and changing customer habits are inducing banks to downsize their branch network : a key effect of this phenomenon is the reduced appetite of banks for acquiring ailing institutions. the economic crisis is also creating “ overcapacity ” in the eu banking sector, which, on average, struggles to remunerate capital, further diminishing returns on mergers and acquisitions. under these conditions, the “ franchise value ” of ailing banks is small and potential buyers are often willing to enter into a deal only at negative prices. • as is well known, piecemeal liquidation

by changes in physical storage devices, it platforms and software. the theory and practice of building archives in the big - data era is in its infancy ; it needs to grow up fast. third, the emergence of big data has raised the importance of data integrity, confidentiality and privacy to a level never seen before. protection of personal data is central to our societies ; one could say that it helps to define them, to the extent that it is inextricably linked to the protection of individual rights more generally. the sheer amount of personal data now available, and the growing ease of connecting individual information across databases, have far - reaching implications for fairness and freedom ; they have thus spurred much digital - privacy regulation. the connections with the previous point are, i think, rather obvious ( data integrity, for instance, is central to both ) ; so are the implied trade - offs. for instance, the right to be forgotten, increasingly ( and, i think, rightly ) granted to individuals, conflicts with society ’ s desire to keep records. no wonder that rules are sometimes inconsistent across different jurisdictions, data domains or legal purposes. a systematic way of weighing conflicting principles against one another should be found. ideally, one would like to have global standards ; international cooperation is therefore to be encouraged as far as possible. however, there are limits to this, at least as long as different societies protect individual freedom to a different extent. for the time being, we have to live with this limitation. the challenges of big data require continuous organisational and technological innovation in the institutions that want to use them effectively and fairly. at the bank of italy we have taken several steps in the past few years to enhance our ability to collect, store and exploit huge amounts of data, using state - of - the - art hardware and software. other institutions are surely doing the same. this workshop is a good opportunity to share experiences. preserving the confidentiality of individual data is one specific challenge that many institutions represented here will often face. the issue is not just that the social value of statistical analysis cannot override the legal obligation to refrain from infringing on personal privacy, but also that the quality of the data itself is often premised on confidentiality being guaranteed : without it, proprietary data would be impossible to collect, and much sensitive data, such as data on personal wealth, would be next to useless. we are cooperating with other institutions to find ways to reap the value of merging data from different sources