Italy SME guarantee fund: how the Fondo di Garanzia works

Imagine a twelve-person packaging company near Bergamo asking its bank for €100,000 to buy a folding machine. The accounts are fine. The company is four years old, and the machine is the only thing there is to pledge. The bank hesitates. This is the situation the Italy SME guarantee fund was built for.

Picture the Fondo di Garanzia per le PMI as the state whispering to your bank: go ahead and lend, and if it goes badly we’ll take part of the loss. Below you’ll find who qualifies in 2026, how much is covered and what it costs. You’ll also see how a request travels from your bank to the fund, and where startups are treated better. Funding still new to you? Start with our map from zero to a first round.

What is the Italy SME guarantee fund, in plain words?

What’s a guarantee? Someone else promises to cover your debt if you can’t pay it. Here that someone is the Italian state. If a borrower defaults, the fund pays the bank back part of what it lost. Less risk for the bank, more room to lend to you.

Legge 662/1996 created the fund, and it has been running since 2000. It sits with the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT). Mediocredito Centrale, known as MCC, runs it day to day. In the ministry’s words it covers any financial operation tied to business activity, short-term or long-term.

It helps to know what it isn’t. It isn’t a grant, meaning money you never repay: MIMIT states that the fund “non eroga contributi in denaro”, it hands out no cash. And it isn’t a yes from the bank. Whether to lend, how much, at what rate: all of that is still the bank’s call. The guarantee only makes yes easier.

Who can use the Fondo di Garanzia?

Micro, small and medium companies registered in the Registro delle Imprese, plus professionals with a partita IVA, the Italian VAT number. Financial and insurance activities are out. So a freelance architect can ask for it, and so can a ten-person SRL, the Italian limited company.

Size follows the EU definition. Micro: fewer than 10 employees, turnover or balance sheet up to €2 million. Small: fewer than 50 employees, up to €10 million. Medium: fewer than 250 employees, and either turnover up to €50 million or a balance sheet up to €43 million.

Then come the small mid-caps, companies with 250 to 499 employees. They were let in during the pandemic and stayed after the 2024 reform, with a lower cover and a 1.25% commission. Two groups are shut out: companies in difficulty under EU rules and, again since the 2024 reform, those in band 5 of the fund’s rating model. The fund scores the companies it assesses on a five-band scale. Band 5 is the riskiest.

How much does the guarantee cover in 2026?

It depends on what the loan is for. The table shows the 2026 percentages, which Mediocredito Centrale described on 2 January 2026 as unchanged from 2025. Decree-law 200 of 31 December 2025 (art. 14, comma 1) extended the 2025 rules for one more year.

Loan type	Cover	Good to know
Investment loans (machinery, software, equipment)	80%	Direct guarantee and reinsurance carry the same percentage
Nuova Sabatini loans	80%	MIMIT lets the fund assist them up to 80%
Reduced-amount loans (up to €40,000 per borrower) and microcredit	80%	The fund’s rating model does not apply to reduced-amount loans
Innovative startups, innovative PMI, certified incubators	80%	Startups: free, with no credit assessment by the fund
Liquidity loans (salaries, suppliers, working capital)	50%	Same for direct guarantee and reinsurance

A couple of terms need a line each. With a direct guarantee, the fund guarantees your bank. With reinsurance, also called counter-guarantee, a confidi guarantees the bank first and the fund backs the confidi. A confidi is a mutual guarantee consortium owned by small businesses, which guarantees its members’ loans.

Then the ceiling. The maximum guaranteed amount is €5 million per company, double the old €2.5 million. MCC announced on 26 February 2024 that the higher limit was operational from 29 February and permanent.

How do you ask for the guarantee, step by step?

1. Go to a bank, a financial intermediary or a confidi. MIMIT says the company must turn to one of them.
2. Ask for the loan and say you’d like the fund’s guarantee on it.
3. The bank or the confidi files the guarantee request through the fund’s online platform.
4. The fund checks the request. For most companies that includes scoring them with its rating model. Loans up to €40,000 and innovative startups skip that scoring.
5. Once the guarantee is in place, the bank signs the loan and pays it out. On the guaranteed part it can’t take any other collateral, insurance or bank guarantee.

What does the guarantee cost?

Not always nothing. Under the January 2024 reform, microenterprises pay no one-off commission. Small companies pay 0.5% of the guaranteed amount and medium ones 1%. Take the packaging company: a €100,000 loan guaranteed at 80% means a guaranteed amount of €80,000, so a small company like that would owe €400, and a medium one €800.

Innovative startups don’t pay, and the fund doesn’t assess their creditworthiness at all. Innovative PMI keep the free access but go through the fund’s credit assessment, according to MIMIT’s report on innovative companies and the fund, with data to 31 March 2025.

Banks pay too. A decree of 21 January 2026, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 42 of 20 February 2026, adds an extra premium on top of any commission. The lender is the one who owes it, on guarantees requested and obtained after the decree took effect. The source is Legge 207/2024 (art. 1, commi 451 to 454). Whether any of it reaches your price is a question for your banker. Ask for every cost in the written offer.

How a guarantee changes a bank’s decision: a worked example

Back to Bergamo, with round numbers and an invented company. The folding machine costs €100,000, and the bank’s credit officer asks one question: if this company stumbles, what do we get back? A second-hand machine rarely repays what a new one cost.

Now add the fund at 80%. Up to €80,000 of the €100,000 is covered. That leaves the bank with a real exposure of around €20,000. The operating rules go one step further. On the guaranteed part the bank can’t ask for a mortgage, an insurance policy or another bank guarantee. On the remaining €20,000 it still can, as long as the collateral value stays within the uncovered portion.

The question in the credit committee changes, from “can we survive the worst case?” to “is this plan good enough for €20,000 of risk?”. That one is easier to answer yes to. It still isn’t automatic, and the loan stays yours to repay: the guarantee protects the bank, not the borrower.

Does the fund treat startups differently?

Yes, if the startup is innovative in the legal sense. Innovative startups get 80% cover, no fee and no credit assessment by the fund. MIMIT’s 43rd periodic report shows what that meant in practice: by 31 March 2025, 17,159 financing operations for innovative startups, €3.0 billion of loans, €2.5 billion guaranteed, across 7,333 companies.

The status has its own tests, which our guide to Italy’s innovative startup status walks through. A company that doesn’t qualify can still use the fund as an ordinary SME.

A guarantee only helps if a bank is willing to lend. For money that doesn’t come from a bank, look at grants for founders under 35 or at the zero-interest loan in our Smart&Start Italia guide. If the loan pays for machinery, the Nuova Sabatini can sit alongside it: MIMIT says a Sabatini loan can be assisted by the fund up to 80%.

Your checklist before you talk to the bank

• Check which size band you fall into, micro, small or medium, and whether your sector is financial or insurance (those are out).
• Is the loan for an investment or for liquidity? The answer sets your cover at 80% or 50%.
• Do the sums before the meeting: loan times cover gives the guaranteed amount, and your size band gives the one-off commission.
• Ask which bank or confidi will file the request with the fund.
• Innovative startup? Say so in the first meeting, because it changes the cost and the checks.
• Get every cost in writing: interest, fees, commission, any extra premium passed on to you.
• Read the MIMIT and Mediocredito Centrale pages again the week you sign. The 2026 rules are an extension.

Public funding has more doors than this one. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on which fits your plan, that’s what our public funding service is for. For the wider choice between equity and debt, read how to raise capital for a startup in Italy, and if you’re still sizing the amount, how much money you need to start a startup.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change: check the official MIMIT and Mediocredito Centrale pages, or ask a professional, before you apply.