BBVA Compass’ signature blue colors to welcome attendees to Houston’s Pride Parade

The parade in the nation’s most diverse city typically draws more 500,000 attendees, organizers say. Its mission is to bring lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender individuals and allies together to educate the world on issues important to the LGBT community. As an official sponsor of the parade, BBVA Compass gets the honor of hoisting its 40-foot banner above the main festival entrance downtown on Smith Street. As part of its support, the bank also held a special reception during Saturday’s National Women’s Soccer League match between the Houston Dash and the Orlando Pride honoring the parade’s grand marshals.

By sponsoring the Pride Parade, we’re honoring the people who decided to build their bright futures in Houston, like we did.

“We are so proud to be in Houston, a true melting pot and one of the most welcoming cities you can land in as an individual or a business,” said BBVA Compass Director of Corporate Responsibility and Reputation Reymundo Ocañas. “By sponsoring the Pride Parade, we’re honoring the people who decided to build their bright futures in Houston, like we did. And we’re honoring this city’s amazing diversity, which we believe without a doubt gives us a competitive advantage in today’s age of opportunity.”

Commitment to diversity

BBVA Compass’ commitment to diversity has earned the bank significant recognition this year. It scored a 90 — the highest of any company headquartered in Alabama — on the 2017 Corporate Equality Index, the Human Rights Campaign's measure of LGBT-inclusive policies at some of the nation's largest workplaces. The bank, which is based in Birmingham, Ala., and has a sizeable presence in Texas and other states across the Sunbelt, did so in part on the strength of its workplace diversity and inclusion training program and the establishment of a Diversity Council to steer the bank's long-term inclusion efforts, among other things.

BBVA Compass also landed on DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity list for the first time this year. The list began in 2001, with each company that participates assessed in four key areas of diversity management: the talent pipeline; talent development; leadership accountability; and supplier diversity. In awarding BBVA Compass a spot on the list, DiversityInc pointed to the following:

• The makeup of the bank's senior leadership ranks: The percentage of minorities (blacks, Latinos and Asians) in BBVA Compass' senior leadership is higher than the average among the Top 50 companies by 88.4 percent, or nearly double the Top 50 average.
• The bank's strong commitment to supplier diversity: BBVA Compass' percentage of total procurement spent with tier-1 minority-owned suppliers is 13.4 percent higher than the percentage averaged among the Top 50 companies.

“We are enormously proud of these achievements,” Ocañas said. “But at the end of the day, we’re just people serving people, and we’re trying to do it to the best of our abilities. We know that the best way to do that is to build a workforce that fully reflects the clients and businesses we serve.”