Data

With the creation of the new Analytics Transformation Unit, BBVA brings together its global team of over 2,500 data scientists and specialists, aiming to advance the development of data-driven services by leveraging the latest innovations in artificial intelligence.

In 2023, BBVA chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate its data-driven transformation. A year later, and the bank’s global cloud data platform is a reality. Following a process that involved multiple use cases and numerous teams, BBVA has successfully completed the full migration in Europe and Uruguay to its ADA (Analytics, Data, AI) cloud platform. The project involved the complex task of migrating tens of thousands of processes and thousands of users, all with no service interruptions. Given its success, the BBVA Group is now preparing to expand ADA in 2025 to the other countries in which it operates, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

Reorienting the workforce, attracting talent and improving energy infrastructure are some of the key areas the consulting firm McKinsey & Company has identified for the European Union can unleash its potential in artificial intelligence. This would allow labor productivity in Europe to increase by up to three percent annually by 2030, while reducing the gap with more competitive countries in AI, such as the United States.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the way we interact with the world. At BBVA, the Behavioral Economics team works to leverage its potential in a safe and responsible way by improving customer experience and process efficiency. How? By shaping AI development and adoption.

BBVA is the world’s thirteenth most advanced bank on account of its ongoing efforts to integrate data and AI technologies, according to the Evident AI Index. More precisely, the bank ranks first in Spain and fourth in Europe, where it is widely recognized as offering outstanding professional development opportunities for its AI specialists and for having defined a Group-wide strategy that permeates the upper echelons of the organization.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly mainstreamed in society and used to make decisions that affect people´s lives in areas such as  their workplace or  the justice system. This presents the challenge of biased algorithms, which are mainly caused by biases or distortions in the training data. Proposals are already in place that caution against bias and seek to mitigate its harmful impact on society.

Opening imagen created with Midjourney (AI)

BBVA has taken a firm step toward the future by expanding its Data University program, which now features new courses on generative artificial intelligence (generative AI). As part of the agreement signed with OpenAI, the bank is calling on its employees, from data scientists to any other member of the team, to apply the latest advances in AI, machine learning and advanced analytics in developing innovative financial products. BBVA’s Data University has already impacted more than 50,000 employees in 6 years, of whom nearly 5,000 have completed specialized courses. BBVA is also looking to strengthen its educational ecosystem through partnerships with prestigious institutions such as the University of Navarra, Telefónica and Coursera.

After years at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI)-based research and projects, BBVA has taken another big step forward in the use of generative AI in its main markets. Not only has it prioritized around 100 projects to be developed with various tools that employ this new technology, it has also signed a strategic agreement with OpenAI —the creator of ChatGPT— to start deploying this cutting-edge tool among its employees. The aim is to explore, in a safe and responsible way, how generative AI can expedite processes, improve productivity and foster innovation thanks to its abilities to create text and images and process information, among other features.

BBVA’s app is the main channel customers use to contact the bank. Over 75 percent of customers around the world use the app. With this level of outreach, the current challenge for BBVA entails getting customers to use the new features and do more mobile transactions. To achieve this, the bank has developed a strategy to improve the digital intensity of its customers, with which it has increased interactions on the app by 32 percent in just one year, largely driven by the financial health services.

Data is a strategic lever for BBVA, which has been working for years to make it accessible across the entire organization so that it supports every business decision. In this endeavor, Domo has become an essential tool, as Elena Alfaro, Global Head of Data and Advanced Analytics in Client Solutions at BBVA, explains in this new success story, which showcases the value of this platform in monitoring progress toward strategic objectives, spotting trends and enabling the bank to swiftly tailor products and services to customer needs.

The bank offers its data scientists and engineers an extensive and continuous training ecosystem, both in-house and in partnershipwith top international universities and educational institutions,so that they may apply the latest advances in artificialintelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics in thedevelopment of cutting-edge financial products. In addition, italso offers training to other professional profiles so that they canuse data analytics to solve business challenges in their areas.In just 5 years, the BBVA Campus has trained more than50,000 employees, including 900 data scientists, through theData University.

BBVA uses AWS to deliver advanced analytics and data services in the cloud, taking a decisive step in its data and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation process. As part of its transformation into a data- and AI-driven organization, BBVA will use AWS to harness analytics and machine learning to transform its internal processes, improve risk management, drive growth, and provide innovative solutions for its customers.

The Mercury library stores the code that BBVA's data scientists reuse to develop analytical models embedded in a range of financial products. In line with the open source philosophy, the bank has published Mercury on Github, a code hosting platform for version control and collaboration. This means other programmers will be able to use Mercury code in their work, which will help drive fintech innovation and further evolve the library with contributions from the community.

The spread of artificial intelligence will have positive and negative effects. In order for the former to outweigh the latter, companies, politicians and social groups should gave some thought to this and act accordingly.