Digital sales now account for 32% of BBVA’s total sales in South America
BBVA's digital sales in South America now account for 32% of total sales in the region, after rising almost 16% over the past year. This growth is based on a highly diversified portfolio: 50% of insurance policies, 48% of investment funds, 40% of long-term deposits and 35% of consumer loans in the region are nowcontracted digitally.
One of the essential requirements to boosting digital sales is customer digitization. To this end, BBVA has been significantly expanding its digital customer base. According to Antonio Bravo, BBVA Head of Business Development in South America “over 50% of our customers are digital in Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, and we’re seeing significant acceleration in mobile customer growth in Colombia and Peru (46% in Colombia and 74% in Peru over the past year)”.
BBVA has set out to lead the industry’s transformation"
BBVA’s digital transformation has become the Group’s strategic priority, as a result of the emergence of a new scenario in the financial industry, marked by the arrival of new digital competitors and the mass adoption of the smartphone as a gateway to financial services. Given this new paradigm, BBVA has set out to lead the industry’s transformation and to build the best bank of the digital era.
According to Antonio Bravo, “the transformation of our banks in South America shows very solid results in indicators such as customer digitization, digital sales and customer experience.” He added: “Also, we're managing to secure solid growth rates in digital sales, which are yielding additional revenues that turn out to be, in most cases, incremental compared to the sales we generate in other channels”.
This process is being carried out with multidisciplinary teams (scrums) of professionals in all the countries that use new work methodologies (agile) aimed at improving quality and productivity. “So far this year, we’ve doubled the number of scrums in the region, and there are already more than 1,000 individuals working following agile processes in South America. This is allowing us to improve, quarter after quarter, in every country, the servicing and sales functionalities on our website, mobile app and ATMs.”
We leverage the Group’s advantages to launch global solutions"
Global implementation and expansion of many projects enables quick local implementations based on tested and successful country-specific developments. “We leverage the Group’s advantages to launch global solutions, such as our Wallet or Saving Pockets (a functionality that allows customers to generate savings plans). We also leverage critical global capabilities in areas such as design, software development or digital analytics”.
Globally, BBVA recently announced that it is now processing over one million sales operations through digital channels every month. This achievement shows the increasingly intensive use by BBVA customers of the digital services that the Group is rolling out on an ongoing basis across the world, as part of its goal to become a completely digital institution.
Rapid growth in digital sales is an indicator of the BBVA digital channels’ efficiency. In fact, BBVA Spain’s mobile application was recently recognized by Forrester as the one that offers the best mobile banking services in the world.
BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila, during the conference call following the publication of the Group’s third-quarter 2017 results, noted that “by year-end, 92% of BBVA’s products and services will be available through the mobile platform in Spain.” He stressed that “we are already seeing, quarter after quarter, the tangible results of the digital transformation”.