BBVA receives Euromoney's global award for Best Bank Transformation
BBVA receives Euromoney’s global award for Best Bank Transformation BBVA’s digital project to lead the financial industry in the 21st century was the best transformation over the past 12 months by a financial institution at a global level, according to British magazine Euromoney. The jury singled out BBVA in this new global category of the ‘Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2014’ for the achievements of its senior management in transforming the business, following a comprehensive strategic review of the bank in order to tackle the new challenges facing the industry.
“Banks are fully aware of the challenges posed by the new digital era. But few, if any, have put being a digital bank at the heart of everything they do. The winner of this award is the exception. We think BBVA is well placed to become the world's leading digital bank,” Euromoney said.
This year BBVA has taken a decisive step in its transformation towards a digital business model adapted to new customer demands. This new environment is marked by an increasing use of mobile devices for internet access and by the disruption caused by new entrants. In March, BBVA announced the creation of Digital Banking, a new area whose prime goals are to accelerate the Group's transformation and boost development of new digital businesses.
The new unit is responsible for commercial offerings, the multi-channel strategy, the distribution model and design of the Group’s commercial and operational processes. It also combines in-house developments such as BBVA Wallet and Wizzo with the bank’s startup investments involving BBVA Ventures and the acquisition of innovative companies such as Simple.
The creation of Digital Banking marks the start of the second phase of BBVA's transformation, following an initial phase centered on the development of its new technology platform. Such platforms are essential for the new services customers demand, to enable the bank to compete with new entrants in the financial sector and to handle the exponential growth in transactions triggered by the expansion of digital banking. In 2006, BBVA processed 90 million transactions a day. Today this has grown to 250 million a day and the figure is forecast to reach 1.2-1.4 billion a day in 2020.
BBVA Chairman Francisco González believes that banks have a crucial competitive edge: a huge volume of information on their customers. The challenge is to convert this information into knowledge and use it to offer customers what they want. “BBVA is reinventing itself; converting an efficient and profitable analog bank into a digital house based on knowledge. As it travels this road, BBVA is leading the way for 21st-century banking at the global level”, he said.
Regional awards
Euromoney also chose BBVA as Best Bank in Latin America for the fourth time in the last six years. For the eighth consecutive year, it selected BBVA as Best Bank in Venezuela and, for the second year in a row, as Best Bank in Peru.
In investment banking, BBVA retained its title as Best Debt House in Spain. Furthermore, it also won Best M&A House in Spain, where BBVA is the leader among the members of Spain’s IBEX35 index. Lastly, BBVA Bancomer was Best Investment Bank in Mexico. This award recognizes the work done by the leading bank in that market, where it excels in all investment banking activities, such as Equity Capital Markets, Debt Capital Markets, M&A, Project Finance, Global Market and Cash Management.
Every year, the Euromoney Awards for Excellence provide an exhaustive selection of those banks that stand out from their competitors, worldwide and in each market. The jury combines quantitative data with informed and important subjective judgments to determine which banks offer the highest levels of service, innovation and expertise to their customers.