Reflections on Open Summit Mexico

BBVA hosted the third edition of Open Summit in Mexico earlier this month, bringing together the leaders and innovation in Latam that are creating the future of the industry.

It was the first event of its kind to be held in Mexico, following the success of Open Summit Madrid, which has become a landmark event in the European fintech calendar since it was first hosted in the Spanish capital in 2017.

At BBVA, collaboration with the wider fintech ecosystem is one of the fundamental pillars of its transformation strategy - to ultimately bring new products and services both to BBVA Group and to its customers and clients, while supporting the development of the fintech ecosystem as a whole.

The theme for Open Summit Mexico was 'Money, Technology & Life'. Industry leaders including Julio Pernia, CEO of Bdeo, and Carla Bergareche from Shroeders joined Mark Schulman, the world renowned drummer, currently on tour with P!NK, who delivered a closing keynote talking about how to bring out your inner rockstar in business.

World renowned chef Joan Roca, of the frequently voted Best Restaurant in the World: El Celler de Can Roca - talked about innovation in the restaurant industry and the positive impact working with BBVA had brought to him and his brothers as they scour the world for the most inventive ingredients and cooks.

Another delivering at the event was Director of Business Development at BBVA Mexico Hugo Nájera, Director of Business Development at BBVA Bancomer. In his speech, he began by talking about the impact of technology on both money and how people relate to it.

He said: “The relationship is changing dramatically from the branch to digital interaction. For example, so far this year we have opened more than 500.000 digital accounts". He added that in his opinion, this change in mindset and habits is a reflection of where the future of financial services should be directed.

"In Latin America within 10 years, 40% of the bank’s revenues will come from people belonging to the Millennials and the Z generation"

This, he said, means that the next generation of financial services will be built for these generations who will be the new consumers, and that account must be taken of the new expectations they will want: for example greater immediacy, more community sustainability from the companies they bank with and those generations tendency towards enjoyment of something, rather than possession - for example with cars.

Nájera also highlighted the importance of Open Banking and the new emerging ecosystem. "The way financial services are organized is going to change dramatically, the biggest financial services distributor is an app on a cell phone," he said referring to the Chinese WeChat super app.

He said he considers it essential to integrate with the ‘Fintech’ community, to build ecosystems full of APIs and to start building everything globally. He pointed out the leap that Latin America is experiencing where " the ecosystems they are developing are becoming more robust and there are more and more ‘Fintechs’, Mexico alone already has more than 400".

In conclusion, he explained that this global development is going through a cultural change and a change in the new forms of work, which is the real challenge for organizations that were not born digital but are turning to it. He added that the new brand is fundamental to this change.