Big Data

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.

Elena Alfaro, Global Head of Data and Advanced Analytics at BBVA's Client Solutions, is fervent about her career. Holding a degree in Business Administration and Management, she has maintained a strong connection to technology. Over the past decade, she has been deeply immersed in the world of data. In "Looking for Vocations," a project by the European University and Atresmedia radio designed to guide prospective university students in their career choices, she shares her experience.

BBVA has set a huge digital challenge for itself: to go one step further in the banking services it provides and offer personalized suggestions that improve its customers’  financial health. To do so, it uses data science to identify the characteristics that define them (always with their prior consent) and therefore offer suggestions on how to manage their everyday finances, lower their debt, save or plan for the future.

BBVA has managed to get its app to learn to read customers’ bills, distinguish their energy costs and calculate their equivalent in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in order to offer personalized advice to save energy. Behind the carbon footprint calculator, which has been operational in Spain and will reach Turkey shortly, is an artificial intelligence system that is still being developed. In 2022, it will add transportation measurements to give an even more accurate picture of each user’s environmental impact.

BBVA Research keeps making progress in its project to measure the economy in real time and high definition, adding an index to measure investment and its components in its operating countries to its range of Big Data indicators.

BBVA's state-of-the-art data processing centers (DPCs) hold the most prestigious certifications in the world in terms of design, construction and operational sustainability. This ensures that the Group's operations are maintained in the face of possible contingencies, offering the best service to its customers under virtually any circumstances.

“Real-time measurement of economic activity is a necessity in these times,” said Tomasa Rodrigo during the traditional summer course at Menéndez Pelayo International University (Santander), organized by the Spanish Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE), with BBVA's collaboration and sponsorship.

Innovation, teamwork, knowledge acquisition and use of new technological capabilities are essential to developing new products and services that are more in line with customer needs. The BBVA Global Ninja Hackathon accordingly set the challenge of creating a prototype to attract and/or retain customers using artificial intelligence and data, in partnership with IBM. Did anyone manage it?

BBVA´s CEO was invited to speak at the third edition of an annual meeting organized by the students of the Koç School in Istanbul. The event analyzed opportunities in fintech as well as technology and digitization´s contribution to the banking sector.

It’s a challenge to find out what society thinks about a company or brand, especially when you have 40 million followers spread across 10 countries and 190 social media profiles, like BBVA. Even so, the winners of the BBVA Hackathon 2020 accomplished it in only three days, developing a tool to measure users’ feelings about the bank on social media, using machine learning techniques.

On May 25, 2020, the General Data Protection Regulation celebrated its second year of entry into application. As envisaged in the standard itself, the European Commission performed an assessment on its application and functioning over this period of time, taking into account the feedback provided by associations, companies, consumers and EU institutions. The commission has finally released the corresponding findings, which concludes that, on top of having a very positive impact, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that the Regulation is prepared for the new digital age

This partnership deal will let BBVA employees take an official master’s degree in Big Data, gain recognition as data scientists or achieve an industrial doctorate in data science. In addition, the agreement will enable students at Universidad de Navarra to carry out research alongside BBVA and even join the bank later on.

Beyond hastening the adoption of specific technologies - such as telemedicine or robotics – one of the brightest outcomes of the scenario brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has been the unprecedented collaborative spirit that has emerged, which could unleash deeper changes in technological development in the coming years. The challenges posed by the coronavirus aftermath may lead to increasing levels of data sharing and faster deployment of solutions to preserve privacy, which could help lay the foundation for new digital infrastructures.

Ricardo Forcano, the Global Head of Engineering and Organization at BBVA, participated in a digital meeting organized by the Association for Managerial Progress (APD) entitled ‘Innovation and culture for organizational growth’.  During the event, the director explained how the current situation can serve as an impetus to redesign work methods in organizations. He also explained that BBVA is using collective intelligence and data to face the current crisis.

A recent article by MIT Sloan Management Review highlighted the innovations in data wrapping that companies like BBVA and PepsiCo are pushing into the markets.

Joaquín Dopazo is leading a project that uses a machine learning algorithm to identify proteins involved in the illness and cross match this information with a database of drugs used to treat other conditions. “We checked if some of the proteins detected are therapeutic targets of other medications approved for other uses, and we concluded that these treatments could act on the mechanisms that COVID-19 uses to cause harm,” says the researcher, who in 2018 won a BBVA Foundation team grant in the Big Data category.

A BBVA Research study leverages big data technology to monitor worldwide media treatment of COVID-19. Analyzing more than 80,000 online news publications in more than 100 languages, the study concludes that both the extent of news coverage and its sentiment provides valuable information about the pandemic's development and the degree to which it impacts the economy and politics. Furthermore, a correlation between increased number of infections and ‘media stress’ has been observed.

Artificial intelligence is contributing to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects directly related to pharmacology, medical and hospital care, or mobility analysis to reduce contagion have found a crucial ally in data science to make progress and deliver results.

BBVA Research has used big data technologies to examine the impact of COVID-19 on Spanish consumption. The conclusions reflect a 49 percent average decline in consumer spending. The analysis has led to a collaboration between researchers at BBVA Research, the University of Cambridge, the Imperial College of London, and the University of Edinburgh. The use of anonymous transactional data to gain a real-time reflection of reactions to the crisis and economic policies was justified for decision-making purposes.

Unequivocally identifying people online and respecting their privacy remain major challenges for companies and a growing cause of concern for users. Covault is committed to a model whereby banks take on the role of the verifiers of users’ data, which is in keeping with the trend within the ecosystem.

The European Research Council has presented one of its most prestigious research grants to  Stephen Hansen, an Associate Professor of Economics and researcher at the Imperial College of London, and previously at the University of Oxford. With this grant, Hansen will start a research project on big data together with BBVA Research.

Is it possible to take advantage of big data without it affecting the privacy of users? The answer may reside in “Privacy-enhancing technologies”, or PETs, a set of technologies that use different computational and mathematical approaches with the same purpose: extracting data value in order to unleash its full commercial, scientific and social potential, without jeopardizing the privacy and security of this information.

Did you know? There are more than 1,300 different roles within BBVA—and they all play a critical role in creating opportunities for our customers. Over the coming months, we’ll be profiling some team members and sharing how they’re Working for Our Customers.

Over the next decade the labor market around Big Data will be shaped by artificial intelligence and automation. Experts predict that in the future there will be new data-related jobs, such as algorithm trainers and maintainers. These are new job positions that will emerge as information management becomes increasingly complex and valuable.

The role technology plays in people’s lives –both personal and business– is continually growing. As a bank, BBVA committed to transforming itself digitally long before the start of the last decade, understanding that technology was going to have a huge impact on how the industry operates. In this article, BBVA experts in various fields give their view on the changes that 2020 will see in the technological landscape.

One of the biggest challenges in advanced analytics is developing mechanisms to determine how reliable the decisions made by algorithms are. Now, research by BBVA’s Artificial Intelligence Factory is proposing a new method to make machine learning models capable of expressing the uncertainty in their predictions in a clearer manner. It’s an exploratory approach to make artificial intelligence more transparent, measure the reliability of its predictions and  fine tune the accuracy of its results.

Automatic learning is a prerequisite for intelligent systems. It enables data-driven predictions and creates new business opportunities. Banking in general, and BBVA in particular, is already taking advantage of this technology in order to improve products and services for its customers.