Carlos Torres Vila: BBVA’s investment in Mexico is set to exceed 80 billion pesos between 2019-2024

In his speech, Carlos Torres Vila pointed to Mexico's contribution to BBVA's record earnings in 2023. This trend continued in the first quarter of 2024, in which the Group posted a net attributable profit of €2.2 billion - 19 percent more than the same period last year; once again, mainly driven by Mexico and Spain.

Mexico is a great country, with enormous potential to take advantage of the opportunities arising from the new world order and increasing regionalization, leveraging key trends such as innovation and sustainability. “That's why our firm commitment to the country will continue,  making a real contribution, as we have been doing all these years," the BBVA Chair stressed.

Carlos Torres Vila explained that the BBVA Group invested nearly 20 billion pesos in Mexico last year, mainly in technology, physical infrastructure and headquarters. "Factoring in the investments planned for this year, we will have invested 81.4 billion pesos since 2019 - well above the 63 billion peso target we initially set in our 2019-2024 investment plan. Our ultimate goal is to provide the best service to our more than 30 million customers in Mexico and also to contribute to Mexican society in general," he added.

Regarding the economic outlook for Mexico, the BBVA Chair noted that growth is expected to be around 2.5 percent this year. This will be driven by domestic consumption—supported by a strong labor market and remittances—and the increase in investments. In addition, the global reshaping of supply chains makes Mexico the ideal hub for manufacturing and nearshoring services, with significant international investment, he stressed. "Nearshoring is starting to become a reality. By 2023, Mexico had already become the top trading partner of the United States, surpassing China. The forecast is clear that it will further increase its share in the coming years. In addition, companies are ramping up their production capacity in Mexico to tap into nearshoring. Proof of this is the exponential growth in the construction of industrial parks, which are almost fully occupied," he explained.

Carlos Torres Vila spoke to the regional advisors about BBVA's winning strategy, underpinned by innovation, digitization and sustainability. This led to the best results in the bank's history last year: €8.02 billion, 20 percent more than the previous year. This is a fact that has been recognized by the market, with excellent performance by the bank’s share. Since the start of 2019 through the end of April, the BBVA’s stock performance has brought a total shareholder return of nearly 200 percent including dividends, almost double the average for European banks, the BBVA Chair stated. “In addition to benefiting customers and shareholders, our value creation results in a greater positive impact on society as a whole. We expanded our loan portfolio by 7.6 percent globally, with double-digit growth in Mexico. In 2023, more than 140,000 families (including more than 30,000 Mexican families) bought homes, 550,000 new loans were granted to SMEs and the self-employed, and more than 70,000 large companies boosted their business," he explained.

The BBVA Chair also spoke highly of the Group's commitment to innovation, which has been "a fixture at the bank for many years" and puts BBVA at the forefront of the trends that are transforming the finance industry. “Our customers benefit enormously from digitization, with convenient, straightforward and accessible channels to interact with BBVA. In 2023 we added more than 11 million new customers - 5.2 million of which came from Mexico. This year, for the first time, we surpassed the milestone of 50 million customers banking with us via mobile. Mexico accounted for almost half, with 22 million, and spectacular growth that tripled the 2018 figure," he noted.

Carlos Torres Vila reminded attendees that BBVA was one of the first banks to commit to the transition to cloud computing. Today, more than 50 percent of online transactions are processed through new generation technologies. In this regard, the BBVA Chair underlined the bank’s pioneering role using advanced data analytics and the great potential of generative artificial intelligence to enrich customer solutions and improve productivity. “BBVA Mexico plays an essential part in this effort, with an advanced data center (AI Factory) and more than 250 projects in its portfolio," he added.

During his presentation, the BBVA Chair also discussed the second pillar of the Group's strategy: sustainability, which continues to gain momentum, and has been established as a major business opportunity. In this sense, he recalled that decarbonization represents an unprecedented window of opportunity for innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact, BBVA is already investing in  the most cutting-edge funds to finance innovation in cleantech. 

The Group channeled €70 billion in sustainable business last year and another €20 billion in the first quarter of 2024. In total, BBVA has mobilized €226 billion since 2018, ahead of the planned roadmap to reach the target of €300 billion by 2025. “This acceleration has a lot to do with the fact that an increasing number of clients, especially companies, are becoming more aware of the need to undertake transition plans,” said Torres Vila. “At BBVA Mexico, we saw impressive growth in this segment in 2023, especially in small and medium-sized companies, which have nearly doubled the amount of sustainable financing," he said.

To wrap up, the BBVA Chair announced that the 2nd BBVA Mexico Sustainability Summit will take place on July 10th at the Torre BBVA. Government authorities and international experts will attend the event, with presentations by leading companies on their decarbonization plans.