Manlio Marucci: the professional freedom of financial advisers comes through multi-mandate

Interview with the president of Federpromm on the Antitrust Authority’s request to abolish single-mandate rules for agents in financial activity: “a turning point for financial advisers too”.

by Massimo Bonaventura

The abandonment of the single-mandate contractual model and the possibility for advisers to hold several mandates at the same time from the same investment houses is an issue that has been debated for some decades now, sometimes quietly and at other times in public. To date, the law establishing the figure of the financial adviser (formerly a promoter) effectively prevents multi-mandate; therefore, only by amending the primary legislation of the TUF and the TUB could the profession be created of someone able to place and provide advice on investment instruments from different principal companies, in complete autonomy. Recently, however, a window of opportunity has opened thanks to the Antitrust Authority (Agcom), which in Bulletin 46/2025 of 01.12.2025 appears to have provided a boost to a possible path toward change for financial advisers as well. We discussed it with Manlio Marucci, president of Federpromm.

Prof. Marucci, why is the Antitrust Authority’s recent request to abolish single-mandate rules for agents in financial activity so important?
Because it marks a turning point that has been awaited for years in a sector where structural rigidity has often prevailed over the logic of competition and the effective protection of the public of savers. The Authority itself has highlighted the critical issues emerging from the legislative text in the version currently before Parliament, drafted to transpose EU Directive 2023/2225 on consumer credit agreements. This important decision inevitably also affects financial advisers offering services outside the office, governed by the rules of the Consolidated Law on Finance (TUF), art. 31 paragraph 2, which is also under discussion in Parliament for the necessary comments and amendments in the Joint Committees on Justice and Finance of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (Government Bill no. 331).

What would the imposition of multi-mandate mean, both for financial advisers and for clients?
Let us begin by saying that the single-mandate constraint has represented for decades an obvious limit to professional freedom, to the ability to offer a broader range of instruments, and to the full development of a modern, transparent market that is truly client-oriented. The Authority’s intervention, developed after in-depth analysis, sends the message that plurality is not a source of disorder, but an element of quality and shared growth between professionals and clients. It means allowing professional operators, agents and advisers, to work with more than one company, broadening choice, raising the level of advice and fostering healthy competition among networks, which would no longer have to rely on contractual loyalty but on the strength of services, professionalism and the retention of financial advisers, achieved through new organisational models.

It sounds like a kind of revolution….
It would indeed be one. To give another very concrete example, financial education itself, today carried out with great difficulty and poor results in terms of the awareness and financial culture of savers/investors, would no longer take place in “watertight compartments” – on one side the closed system of the bank networks and on the other the clients – but would find a daily point of contact in the work of the same financial advisers, who would become fully fledged financial educators thanks to the higher level of technical preparation required by the possibility of working with several distribution models and, consequently, the deeper analysis of objectives and investment choices. The administrative management of client reporting would itself require growth that today appears to be held back by the current system.

What has been the union’s contribution in relation to this new path?
Over the years we have consistently and firmly challenged a regulatory framework that is now outdated and no longer aligned with European standards. No one can deny that Federpromm and Uilca have played a central role in pointing out the imbalance between the constraints imposed on financial advisers and the real benefits for savers, and in promoting a professional culture based on responsibility and autonomy. We therefore hope that Parliament will be able to include multi-mandate in the amendment of the draft legislative decree transposing EU Directive 2023/2225, and hopefully also in the TUF. With the revision of the Consolidated Law on Finance, Parliament has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn an Antitrust Authority guideline for the figure of agents and financial advisers into a structural reform capable of shaping the future of the credit and finance sector.

How do you respond to those who argue that introducing multi-mandate for finance professionals could create difficulties in supervision and less protection for savers?
The introduction of multi-mandate, contrary to what the many people interested in preserving the status quo claim, would not mean weakening controls or reducing protections, which are already in place and cannot in any way be challenged or disputed; rather, it would make them more consistent with an evolving market, where the quality of advice matters more than exclusive membership of a network. The supervisory mechanisms would remain solid and unchanged, while the ability for the adviser to truly choose how to build their business would change, and above all, the saver would receive suggestions that are less conditioned and closer to their real needs.

Would the bank networks have anything to fear from this revolution in the sector?
Absolutely not. The abolition of single-mandate would certainly redraw the sector’s balance, but the largest bank networks are already ready to embrace the call of multi-mandate to compete on innovation, efficiency and training; they have already been, in some ways, farsighted in the recent past and know that, in the immediate future, a system based solely on contractual strength can no longer hold. The tangled “transfer market” mechanism involving some financial advisers, which sector companies and banks fight over with incentives and bonuses, would probably come to an end, and this would perhaps put under pressure not so much the firms – which in recruiting are forced to give up significant profit margins – as those professionals who repeatedly change company every four or five years. The client base would therefore be the great beneficiary of a new model of competition that would shift attention to actual skills and the quality of financial advice, not products.

What, in the end, would be the concrete impact of multi-mandate for agents and financial advisers?
The impact would essentially be of two kinds: cultural and economic. First of all, multi-mandate would restore centrality to the figure of the financial adviser (as well as to agents) as a genuine professional, capable of selecting products on the basis of value and not of belonging, or of conflict of interest. From an economic standpoint, while single-mandate has enabled the principal companies to systematically reduce the profit margins of all financial advisers (and also of agents), competition among networks driven by the need to retain the best professionals would give them quality contracts and more stable earning opportunities.

So what happens now, Prof. Marucci?
What happens now is that the task passes to Parliament, which is called upon to make a choice that can align Italy with the most advanced models and, above all, respond to the needs of a market demanding more freedom and more quality. If Parliament has the courage to seize this opportunity, the financial advice sector, like that of credit, will finally be able to make the evolutionary leap awaited for years, placing competence, transparency and genuine protection of savings at the centre.