Centro Studi Confindustria just released the latest RTT Index reading: -0.4% in May, a reversal from April's +0.3%. Industry took the biggest hit (-2.5%), services followed (-1.6%), and construction held up comparatively well (-0.3%).
Updates like this one have become a fixture in Italy's financial press, and for good reason: analysts and research institutes now treat the RTT Index as one of the fastest, most reliable windows into how the country's economy is actually performing — often just weeks after the fact, and broken down by sector and region.
What started as an experimental indicator has, in a few short years, earned a permanent seat at the table.
That didn't happen on its own. Behind every monthly figure sits an ongoing effort by modefinance's and TeamSystem team to keep the underlying model sharp, current, and increasingly precise.
Here's what's changed over the past two years.
What the RTT Index Actually Measures
What makes it different from a confidence survey or a sentiment index is its foundation: real e-invoices, actually issued, not projections or estimates. It's economic activity captured almost as it happens.
The engine behind it all is modefinance's proprietary Nowcasting model — which tap into the near real-time stream of Italian B2B e-invoices and turn it into usable economic signals.
How the RTT Index Model Was Upgraded
Since launch, modefinance's and TeamSystem teams have been quietly rebuilding the pipeline that feeds the RTT Index, aiming for something more robust and more detailed. As Enrico Fallacara - Team Lead Risk&Rating Data Science- explain, four areas got the biggest overhaul.
1. A Faster, Cleaner Invoice Pipeline
At the core of the index is its invoice data, and that's exactly what got upgraded first: a new database now feeds the algorithm, cutting the lag between an invoice being issued and it showing up in the model. A smarter data-cleaning layer runs upstream too, catching quality issues before they ever reach the calculation stage.
2. Sharper Company Data
An index is only as good as the companies it tracks. A new source for company registry data now keeps that picture current on an ongoing basis, so the RTT Index reflects who's actually operating in the Italian economy today — not who was operating there when the sample was last refreshed.
3. Tighter Quality Control
New checks now flag inconsistencies, duplicates and anomalies before they can distort the numbers. The result: cleaner inputs, and an index that holds up better under scrutiny — which matters for a metric used to inform both policy debates and business decisions.
4. Down to the Province Level
The index can now be sliced far more finely. On top of the existing breakdowns by region, sector and company size, two new layers are available: ATECO 2 and ATECO 4 classifications at the provincial level, and ATECO 4 at the regional level. That means it's now possible to see exactly how one industry is performing in one province — not just how an entire region or macro-sector is trending.
The Payoff: Sharper Data, Sharper Decisions
None of these upgrades sound dramatic in isolation — new database, better checks, finer breakdowns. Together, though, they change what the RTT Index can actually tell you.
- Faster data means less time between what's happening in the real economy and when we find out.
- A more current company base means the sample stays representative instead of drifting out of date.
- Stricter quality checks mean less noise in every percentage point.
- And finer geographic and sector detail means a trade association can zoom in on a single district, or a company can benchmark itself against its exact peer group in its own province — not just against a national average.
Take May's numbers as an example: industry down, construction holding steady, results diverging sharply by region. That kind of nuance only shows up when the data lets you look closely enough — and that's precisely what these upgrades were built to deliver. The RTT Index will keep coming out every month, courtesy of Confindustria's Research Department. Behind the scenes, modefinance's infrastructure keeps working to make each new reading a little sharper than the last.