Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a survey that aimed to analyse the state of organisational and operative evolution of the functions and activities overseeing customer satisfaction in Italian banks. Design/methodology/approach -The research was conducted by questionnaire, to which 92 banks responded, representative of 77 per cent of the total assets of the Italian banking system. Findings -The analysis of the results makes it possible to highlight the current approaches aimed at managing customer satisfaction, as well as the extent of integration between this and other management processes within the banks surveyed. The authors found that in these banks customer satisfaction is no longer a staff activity but increasingly a line activity, it involves the responsibility of top management and is a key indicator in staff incentive schemes. Originality/value -The research aims to contribute to the literature on customer satisfaction on the one hand, by verifying if and how banks measure and manage some of the customer satisfaction cause-effect relationships investigated by studies on the subject and, on the other hand, by focusing attention on organisation and internal processes aimed to support the assessment and improvement of customer satisfaction.

The study aims to verify whether the consideration of a risk measure based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors can reduce the difference between the ex‐ante financial risk and ex‐post volatility of financial assets. The statistical models are run on 17,996 firm‐year observations (3332 active firms from 55 countries and 10 industries, listed on the ECPI Global Ethical Equity index) in 2007–2015. According to our main results, the forecasting effectiveness of traditional financial risk measures can be improved by integrating financial risk with an ESG risk measure that considers the ESG entropy. We found that the dispersion of ESG scores within a country, sector and year is a risk factor that would be helpful in predicting the volatility of financial assets. Other similar long‐run risk measures, such as issuers' credit ratings, do not reveal the same forecasting power. By reducing unexpected volatility, especially in the medium term, the ESG risk measure provides investors and fund managers with a useful metric for decision making.

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the portfolio characteristics and the performance measures of sustainability-themed mutual funds, compared to ethical mutual funds that implement different sustainable and responsible investment strategies. Design/methodology/approach The study refers to a European sample of 106 ethical funds and 51 sustainability-themed funds. The monthly performance of each fund is downloaded from Bloomberg for the period from January 1996 to December 2015. By applying a Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, the authors overcome the limits of a capital asset pricing model (CAPM) based-single index model, to compare the performance of the two categories of funds. Findings Sustainability-themed funds do not differ significantly from ethical funds in terms of portfolio attributes, except for market capitalization, age and net asset value. Regarding performance measures, the results shows that sustainability-themed funds have a lower underperformance than ethical funds (as measured by Jensen’s alpha), whereas the samples do not differ in terms of market risk (as measured by Beta coefficient). The idiosyncratic risk of sustainability-themed funds is positively influenced by the specific portfolio strategies. The sustainability-themed funds show a higher concentration in the industrial sector and a lower exposure to financial sector than ethical funds; in terms of geographical strategy, they are more global and international oriented; they mainly focus on small caps and value stocks. Research limitations/implications The different sustainable and responsible investment strategies can be applied simultaneously and in a growing number of possible combinations. Mutual fund managers can consider thematic approach as an efficient opportunity for reconciling financial performance and economic sustainability. It is demonstrated that sustainability-themed funds adopt a portfolio strategy significantly different from ethical funds and from the environmental, social and governance benchmarks. Mutual fund managers implement a thematic specialization without any negative impact on the funds returns compared to ethical funds; actually, with a proper diversified portfolio, they are able to reduce idiosyncratic risk. Originality/value The analysis is extremely innovative, especially for the thematic sample. During the past 15 years, literature about sustainable and responsible investment has been focused especially on the differences in terms of risk and performance between socially responsible and conventional funds. This paper, starting from the methodology applied in these studies, wants to compare two different types of socially responsible strategies, with a specific focus on sustainability-themed mutual funds, given their exponential growth in the past few years.

The aim of the paper is to compare the risk-adjusted performance of sustainability-themed funds with other categories of mutual funds: sustainable and responsible mutual funds that implement different approaches in portfolio selection and management, and thematic funds not committed to responsible investments. The study analyses a sample of about 1000 European mutual open-end funds where 302 are sustainability-themed funds, 358 are other responsible funds, and 341 other thematic funds. Risk-adjusted performance is analyzed for the period 2007–2017 using different methodologies: a single factor Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), a Fama and French (1993) 3-factor model, and a Fama and French (2015) 5-factor model. Our main findings demonstrate that the risk-adjusted performance of ST funds is more closely related to their responsible nature than to their thematic approach. Sustainability-themed mutual funds are more similar to other socially responsible funds than to other thematic funds, as confirmed by performance analysis over time. They are also better than other thematic funds in overcoming financially turbulent periods and currently benefit from SRI regulation and disclosure.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on public guarantees granted to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the Italian national credit guarantee programme (Fondo Centrale di Garanzia – Central Guarantee Fund – (CGF)). The CGF provides a direct guarantee to banks granting loans or a counter-guarantee to mutual guarantee institutions (MGIs) acting as first-level guarantors. Because the behaviour of MGIs could affect the default risk of counter-guaranteed loans, it is vital to investigate their operating and structural characteristics in order to identify an optimal design for public credit guarantee schemes (PCGSs). Design/methodology/approach Using regression models, the paper analyses the determinants of default for 33,229 SME loans guaranteed by an MGI and counter-guaranteed by the Italian CGF. The dependent variable is the ex-post default risk of SMEs’ counter-guaranteed loans in the 2010-2011 period. The explanatory variables are certain characteristics of the MGI. Findings The authors demonstrate that increases in an MGI’s leverage and the size of the counter-guaranteed portfolios increase the default risk. When the counter-guaranteed portfolio increases, MGIs are more risk taking but take less risk than when local and specialized MGIs are at play. Finally, direct public aid is relevant. Practical implications An appropriate design of the PCGS becomes crucial to controlling moral hazard in financial institutions and ensuring the financial sustainability of public intervention in favour of SMEs. Originality/value The paper evaluates an original and confidential firm-level data set that is not available in public documents or supervisory board statistics but is collected directly from the MGIs that participated in this study.