A gap created by the demise of the Postal Savings Bank pawnshop about eight years ago, and the absence of an institutional microcredit provider, is trying to fill Italian ProntoPeno. What else is the Italian trying to do? pawnshop which since October 18 has been active in Hellas with your first store in the center of Athens? To turn things around for the better about pawnshops in Greece, an activity with a highly negative image and not coincidentally, as it has been associated with illegal activities ranging from usury to theft and smuggling of gold involving highly publicized pawnshop networks that have flourished mostly for ten years. financial crisis year. Literally the day before yesterday, after all, Independent State Revenue Administration discovered tax evasion of several million euros by a well-known pawnshop.

It is no coincidence that the first ProntoPegno store in Greece is located in a building that used to be the store of the National Bank, on the one hand because of the extremely secure safe, but also because the company wants to look more like a bank. . In addition, ProntoPegno is a subsidiary of the Banca Sistema banking group, founded in Italy in 2011 and headquartered in Milan and listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in 2015. He specializes in the purchase of commercial receivables from the Italian government, factoring, and is also active in retail banking. By the way, he also recently acquired the Art-Ritet auction house. After all, the person chosen by the Italians as the regional manager for Greece is Mr. Nikos Kermelis with 22 years of experience in the banking sector. ProntoPegno was established in 2016 and has 13 stores in Italy and the Greek market is the first outside of Italy where it operates. The goal is to open a store in Thessaloniki in the next period, looking for customers from the neighboring Balkan countries, Piraeus and the islands, with the greatest chance of collecting Mykonos.

But why was Greece chosen by ProntoPegno as the first step abroad? “The Greek pawnshop market is fragmented with hundreds of independent individual players – there are about 420 pawnshops operating in Greece, many of which are insolvent. After the withdrawal of the Eurobank from the market in question, the specific activities do not have a good reputation,” said Mr. Nikolaos Kermelis at a press conference yesterday. Whether the decade-long financial crisis and the new inflationary crisis, which also affects revenues, was another reason for the company’s entry into Greece, he characteristically replied: “We don’t like this connection.” He also argued that a pawnshop could also function as a temporary store of valuables. .

The lending rate for loans at a pawnshop is 2% per month, while at other pawnshops it is 10% with the aim of ultimately preventing the borrower from redeeming the things he has pledged. ProntoPegno accepts gold, silver, jewellery, designer watches and gemstones.

The Greek market is the first outside of Italy where it operates.

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It is appropriate to mention here that in 1931 the then Minister of National Economy Panagis Vourlumis (grandfather of the future head of the OTE) proposed a draft law on the establishment of the State Pawnshop (or Charitable Bank, as it was said in brackets in the bill) with the aim of providing microcredits to those who can not get a loan from the bank, and to protect citizens from moneylenders.

The state pawnshop finally started operating in 1934 with the financial support of the Postal Savings Bank, which actually continued until 2012 with two branches in Sophocleous, in the center of Athens, and in Thessaloniki.

At that time, as Mr. Kermelis noted yesterday, 30-40 clients visited the Sophocleous branch daily, which is quite a lot. Following the acquisition of the Postal Savings Bank by Eurobank, the bank continued to operate under the mortgage for a short period of time before a decision was made to terminate it.