BBVA Switzerland’s New Gen account boosts its international expansion via digital onboarding based on ‘selfies’
BBVA New Gen, the investment product offered by the Group’s Swiss franchise, has completed its first year of existence. In a move to streamline the onboarding process, the bank now lets prospective customers sign up online just by uploading a ‘selfie’, after which their identity is verified in a matter of seconds. BBVA Switzerland is leveraging this technology, which can verify identity documents and passports from more than 190 countries, to boost its international expansion.
“For a 100% digital service like BBVA New Gen, offering a simple, secure and multidisciplinary space is critical. We are fully confident the new digital onboarding process will let us reach more people in more countries who want to invest in high-impact innovative and sustainable industries or in cryptoassets,” said Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland.
New Gen was launched just a year ago as a complement to BBVA Switzerland’s traditional private banking model. The product is targeted at a new investor profile that seeks both financial freedom and security. For this reason, armor-plating the security of identity verification is a key priority for scaling up the business.
Biometric technology enables the bank to widen its reach to increasingly diverse customers, regardless of their geography. To continue growing the business, BBVA has opted to reinforce operational excellence by integrating this new system, which recognizes and verifies identity documents and passports from more than 190 countries. Thanks to New Gen's open and digitized structure, customers—mostly based in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Spain and Switzerland itself—have access to a wide range of products and services.
New Gen’s digital onboarding was developed in partnership with Veridas, a BBVA affiliate and an international leader in digital identity verification. In addition to verifying the identity of a new customer by means of an ID card or passport photo, this new technology performs liveness detection based on just a ‘selfie’. Crucially, the AI can detect identity fraud thanks to face biometric technology. The process is seamlessly digital and includes contract signing.
One of the main benefits of BBVA New Gen is its commitment to efficiency, accessibility and the democratization of investment.
The system uses artificial intelligence and face biometric technologies to let customers apply for an account instantly, at any time, from anywhere in the world and using any device. Recent breakthroughs in image recognition and identity verification technologies, data protection and information security enable the bank to offer a seamless experience to the highest standard of security, preventing fraud without need of complex procedures.
BBVA New Gen is one of only a few platforms in the world where customers can hold, buy and sell cryptoassets in the same way they invest in traditional private banking asset classes, such as sustainability products or any of the more than 11 disruptive themes that are transforming the future.
One of the main benefits of the service is its commitment to efficiency, accessibility and the democratization of investment. The minimum amount required to open an account is just 10,000 euros, dollars or Swiss francs, marking a complete departure from the customer concept with which the Group’s Zurich-based franchise has operated for the past 40 years.