The purpose of the paper is to highlight the perspectives of Italian banks which may be defined as «local», which have recently gained market shares in the deposit and loan business. In the Author's opinion, in the new functional and institutional distribution of activities in the Italian financial market which will stem out of the crisis, local banks will be able to keep their essential role only if they will strictly stick to the financial needs of limited geographical areas and if their operations and pace of growth will purposedly and prudentially not exceed the actual availability of adequate managerial and capital resources, within a regulatory framework based on clear definitions of the «proportionality» of rules.