Transformation

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 was recognized by Global Finance as the bank with the best open banking services for companies globally. This award joins 12 other accolades that the prestigious magazine has presented to the bank this year. On a global level, the awards for the best bank for corporate clients, and the award recognizing BBVA’s AI Factory as one of the best financial innovation laboratories stand out. By country, Spain was recognized as having the best sustainable finance and is considered the most innovative bank for companies, and Peru received the award for the best bank for SMEs.

BBVA announces its participation in Project Agorá. This project, launched by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a group of leading central banks, and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), will proceed to the next phase with more than forty private sector financial firms in their exploration of how tokenization can enhance wholesale cross-border payments.

At BBVA, we are undergoing a technological revolution that is transforming our software development process. In mid-2021, we launched Horizon, a global initiative aimed at overhauling our digital channels, particularly in the enterprise sector, and enhancing the scalability of our technological platforms to meet the increasing demands for customer interaction. The primary goal is to foster global unity by creating unique technical solutions that can be implemented across multiple countries. This approach optimizes our efforts, speeds up delivery times, and provides us with a competitive edge in an industry where economies of scale are crucial. Additionally, this project has enabled us to adopt a new strategy for executing global programs by forming geographically diverse teams across different countries.

The city of Barcelona is hosting the first edition of this event in Spain, which ran from August 25 to 29. Within the broad program of activities, BBVA sponsored its Finance Day, which focused on the applications of AI and machine learning within the financial industry.

BBVA’s AI Factory, a center dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, expands to Mexico and Türkiye in order to create products globally and leverage knowledge across the Group. With these new centers, BBVA aims to accelerate the adoption of AI-based solutions to improve customer experience and optimize internal processes. In addition, the bank has hired 230 AI experts, doubling the headcount of these ‘factories’ to more than 400 professionals.

David Puente has been heading up Client Solutions at BBVA for five years. It is an area which, in his words, “drives growth and innovation” at BBVA. He is tasked with developing the value proposition for private and corporate clients, as well as non-clients. His remit includes overall product design, customer experience, relationship and distribution model, as well as building new capabilities and exploring new business opportunities.

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.

Online courses promoted by universities, business school training and even materials offered by technology giants are some of the ways to learn to master artificial intelligence. Beyond programming, AI professionals can receive training in other areas, such as computational linguistics and ethics. Thanks to this trend, Europe currently has over 120,000 professionals who are highly qualified to work in AI.

BBVA AI Factory, BBVA's artificial intelligence hub, has been honored for the third time by Global Finance magazine as one of the leading innovation labs in the financial world. BBVA is the only Spanish bank featured in this ranking, which highlights "excellence" in creating solutions that address current challenges in the financial sector.

BBVA conducted a study in Spain and Mexico that shows that customers who use its main financial health tools save 11 percent and 20 percent more, respectively. But how did the bank ensure that they eliminated the influence of other variables when calculating this savings? To do so, the bank used two machine learning models and causal inference, a statistical methodology that detects complex cause-effect relationships.

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 completed a successful pilot test of distributed execution of quantum algorithms across multiple conventional servers in the AWS cloud. BBVA's pilot, one of the first of its kind in the financial sector, provides the bank with a proprietary architecture to further explore the use of quantum computing in complex financial tasks.

Payments infrastructure company EBA CLEARING successfully completed the first pan-European proof of concept for the R2P (Request To Pay) service. This digital messaging service is designed to streamline collection processes and can help boost instant transfers and electronic billing in the region. BBVA and seven other multinational payment service providers took part in the trial. They proved capable of exchanging payment requests in milliseconds.

The international publication has granted two ‘Innovators Awards’ to BBVA for its crypto asset service in Switzerland and for an automated process the bank has developed to guide the creation and application of machine learning models for the early detection and management of debt.

Exoticca, a leading company in the digitization of big-ticket travel, has announced the signing of a €4 million finance agreement with BBVA Spark. This loan agreement will facilitate the company's expansion in Latin America. The financing is supported by the European Union and the European Investment Fund under the InvestEU Fund program.

In the past two years, BBVA added 7,187 professionals in the data and technology field to its workforce - a figure it plans to increase in 2024 with 2,700 new hires. Of this amount, 1,225 will take place in Spain for the bank’s headquarters in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. Technology talent has become a key aspect of the Group’s digital strategy.

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.

Accenture and The New York Times have devoted the latest episode of their ‘Built For Change’ podcast to BBVA’s ongoing transformation. David Puente, global head of Client Solutions, describes a process that has been hugely successful for the BBVA app, but which is still far from over. The next big impact: artificial intelligence.

BBVA has implemented a business banking service model that speeds up the response to the financial needs of multinationals when they expand into new markets. Employing more than 2,500 specialized managers, the new "Cross-Border" model cuts the requirements for opening non-resident accounts by up to 70 percent, thus drastically shortening the time required to set up new subsidiaries. BBVA Business Banking already works with more than 120,000 subsidiaries of business groups in 14 countries.

The bank has signed a collaboration agreement with the Legendaryum Metaverse to explore how immersive digital environments could change the remote relationship model both between internal areas and with customers. BBVA has opened a remote meeting room in Legendaryum to analyze the potential of these spaces and how they change the way users relate to each other and help in the design of specific banking services.

On this portal, import export companies can access the wide range of solutions that BBVA offers them, such as the international commerce sections from the different local BBVA websites around the world, which help them to streamline these operations. Global Trade Finance also gives the companies access to specialized information that supports them in their international transactions, such as customs paperwork or tenders, with updated data from more than 170 countries.

BBVA is giving a boost to its Pivot Commercial Cards platform by adding support for  Mastercard cards expense management. This platform allows greater control over the use of corporate cards by simplifying the review and authorisation processes for expenses. It already manages daily purchases for more than 85,000 employees of client companies using BBVA's corporate cards across eight countries.

BBVA joins Banca March, Banco Santander, CaixaBank, Generali, Inetum, Línea Directa Aseguradora, MAPFRE, Repsol, Unicaja Banco and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the entities that launched Dalion in 2020. The project works on an innovative digital identity management model based on blockchain, which allows each person full control of their data.

BBVA has chosen Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), to take the most sophisticated operations of the Corporate and Investment Banking area (BBVA CIB) to the cloud. Specifically, the new platform provides greater computing power to make calculations related to financial markets faster, more accurate and more efficient.

Jose Luis Elechiguerra, Global Head of Engineering at BBVA, faces 2023 with a focus on continuing to evolve the technology platform to provide new capabilities that allow us to offer the best solutions to customers. To do this, he maintains his commitment to disruptive technologies such as the cloud, artificial intelligence, big data or biometrics, without losing sight of the digital regulatory framework, as he mentioned in the CIO Spain interview.

BBVA customers in Spain can now choose how they would like to view app content. The bank has added a dark mode option to the app in Spain, which eases navigation and lessens eye fatigue by lowering brightness. The new option will especially help the visually impaired. In addition, the dark theme helps save smartphone battery usage.

Almost 1,000 engineers have joined BBVA in the first half of 2022. A figure that the financial institution expects to double by the end of this year. These are technology profiles that are embedded throughout the different countries where the bank has a presence, 400 of them in Spain.

BBVA has launched a new global software division that brings together more than 16,000 developers across the Group. This new division will speed up delivery of digital solutions and make them more easily scalable across the countries where the bank operates.