World Finance Magazine and European CEO Magazine pay tribute to the BBVA unit’s achievements in customer experience and digital transformation. Garanti has been named as “the Best Retail Bank in Turkey” by World Finance Magazine and as “the Best Retail Bank in Europe” by European CEO Magazine in recognition of the quality of customer experience it delivers, the digital transformation of its branches and innovative projects and solutions such as its instant e-commerce loan.

International investment in infrastructure projects continues to be insufficient. This is the conclusion reached at the B20 summit where global companies provided guidance to the G20. According to the task force charged with studying growth and infrastructure financing, the infrastructure investment gap needs to be resolved to exploit the sector's enormous potential and drive more inclusive development.

In May 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigations released its 2017 Internet Crime Report from its Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3. According to the report, in the last year, $1.42 billion in total losses was reported, all attributable to Internet crime. The crime reporting the biggest monetary loss was related to Business Email Compromise/Email Account Compromise (BEC/EAC).

The European Union is already readying itself for the possible exit of the United Kingdom from the European club without an agreement between the two sides. Although no scenario has been ruled out, Miguel Jiménez, the chief economist for Europe at BBVA Research, argued in a recent article published in El País that “a no-deal exit in March, with no transitional period, is no longer inconceivable”. In his opinion, this would be the worst possible outcome of Brexit.

The European Central Bank in 2018 began the turnover process in a number of key posts on its Executive Board. The crux will be the end of Mario Draghi’s term in office in October 2019 amid doubts about whether his departure will coincide with a hike in interest rates expected between the summer and the fall of next year.

Spain has just become one of the few countries in the European Union with a concrete proposal for launching a regulatory sandbox. The goal? To create a space for experimentation, temporarily unencumbered by regulatory measures, to promote innovation in the financial sector. In doing so, Spain thus has stolen a march on other countries in this area, with a proposed law that appeals to both the traditional financial industry and new fintech startups. Álvaro Martín, Chief Economist for Digital Regulation and Trends at BBVA Research helps us understand how it will function and if it benefits the consumer.

The BBVA Trader platform offers users specialized content that affords them full market analysis for their trading operations. An example of one of the concepts dealt with in the platform is leverage.

More than just an acronym, the Small Business Administration has been around since 1953, serving small businesses around the country in more ways than one. BBVA Compass has consistently used the phrase, “cornerstones of thriving communities” when describing small businesses, and the SBA is a big help in molding those cornerstones.

Each year around August a new round of freshman begin to descend on colleges across the country, armed with everything needed for their first shot at independence. Of all the tools in their arsenal, a checking account might be one of the most important.

In the presentation of its results to the media, BBVA’s CEO Carlos Torres Vila emphasized the bank’s “strong push to business digitization not only drives sales but is fundamental to cost control.” This “digital push” is driving total revenues while keeping costs down. As a whole, this allows efficiency to continue to improve. In fact, the efficiency ratio stood at 49.2 percent as of June, 82 basis points below the figure for 2017 at constant exchange rates.