The sixth annual report on the financial inclusion of migrants by the national monitoring body shows that the number of owners of small businesses that have a checking account has gone from 74,000 in 2010 to almost 150,000 in 2016, with a 21 percent increase between 2015 and 2016 (+12.2 percent annual growth rate). 

The report notes that the number of checking accounts open for more than five years under the name of immigrant business owners has also risen, an index of the growing stability of their relationship with the financial sector: while in 2010 this figure was at 16 percent, by 2016 it had risen to almost 50 percent. 

The monitoring body, which was created through collaboration between the Italian Banking Association (ABI) and the interior ministry, is managed by Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSpi). It noted that, among the customers of financial intermediaries, over the past year there has been a sharp rise in those coming from communities of Bangladesh origins. This community has also increased its remittances to its home country, from 485 million euros in 2016 to 534 million in 2017. 

Bank accounts under Asian nationals (19.6 percent Chinese and 6.8 percent each for Pakistani and Bangladeshi) and Egyptians at 8.6 percent seem particularly active. The report also stressed that female immigrants involved in the economy is a steadily growing trend. It noted that in 2016, businesses run by females holding a bank account represented about 33 percent of all immigrant bank accounts of the sample of 21 entities analyzed, with a growing trend in recent years.