BBVA has updated its personal virtual assistant Blue, integrated in its app, making it more personalized. Blue now has enhanced abilities to interact with customers using natural language, provide tailored information on their finances, and perform some of the most common account and card transactions. In parallel, BBVA created a co-pilot to facilitate the daily work of branch employees. With these initiatives, BBVA is moving forward with its strategy to put artificial intelligence (AI) at the disposal of its customers, and mark the beginning of a new stage in digital banking management. The roll-out of the new assistant Blue, with the AI Factory team participating in the technical aspects, will take place on February 20th in Spain and gradually reach all of the bank’s customers.
Fintech
Fintech
BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) reinforces its commitment to innovation with the integration of BBVA Spark and the group’s Digital Assets & Blockchain strategy. This restructuring strengthens its leadership in advanced financial solutions and the digital transformation of the industry.
Girls start to lose interest in science as they approach adolescence. This ‘abrupt’ change takes place at the age of 16, according to a recent Microsoft. On the 10th anniversary of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Carmen Lópex, Head of Engineering at BBVA Spain, and Alicia Mancheño, a member of the Technovation Girls Advisory Board, reflected on how to combat the prejudices and stereotypes that turn girls away from these professions.
Exoticca, a leading company in the digitization of high-value travel, has secured a new €25 million financing agreement with BBVA Spark. This debt agreement, which builds on the €4 million agreement signed with BBVA Spark last year, will support the company's international expansion and drive its investment in technology.
BBVA has been implementing various plans and initiatives to attract the best tech talent (engineers, mathematicians, and experts in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data management) - one of the most in-demand fields in the job market and a key aspect of the bank’s digital strategy. In the last three years, BBVA has added 10,100 new data and technology professionals to its workforce. The bank expects to boost this number with 1,100 new hires to reach a total workforce of 20,000 people dedicated to these roles.
The BBVA Foundation has granted its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies to Anil K. Jain (Michigan State University, United States) and Michael I. Jordan (University of California, Berkeley, United States) for their “core contributions” to machine learning, which have unlocked developments in biometrics and artificial intelligence.
Garanti BBVA Crypto Asset Trading Platform, part of the Garanti BBVA Group, recently announced that Korcan Abalı will be stepping down as CEO and Onur Güven will replace him. Güven has been a senior manager at a variety of renowned financial technology companies.
Quantum computing, new energy sources, and AI agents: 2025 is set to be defined by a renewed drive for potentially disruptive technologies, with global technology investment projected to grow by 9 percent, according to Gartner.
The BBVA Foundation has honored four researchers with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for their groundbreaking work in establishing the biological foundations for a new class of drugs. These drugs are highly effective in treating type 2 diabetes, promoting significant weight loss in obese individuals, and reducing their risk of cardiovascular issues.
The mass deployment of more than 3,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses across the BBVA Group has unleashed a wave of innovative ideas on how to apply generative AI to improve productivity. Quickly locating information to answer legal queries from customers, increasing the visibility of marketing actions, streamlining the management of large volumes of data or helping code development are just four examples of the more than 900 use cases of strategic interest that have already been implemented by the bank’s employees.
Researchers at BBVA and IBM Research have designed a dataset that functions as a stress test to measure the presence of discriminatory bias in the responses given by generative artificial intelligence models in languages other than English. The BBVA team’s stress test measures biases that could exist in GenAI in Spanish. The work was shown at NeurIPS, the world’s biggest AI conference, and was made available to the open source community to continue the research.
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.
Garanti BBVA recently revamped ‘Garanti BBVA Mobile’, making it faster and easier for investors to monitor and manage their investment portfolios directly on the app. The new menu for investments allows customers to view their portfolio distribution, check the status and research investment options that match their investment goals - all on a single screen. Furthermore, Garanti BBVA Mobile also offers educational content designed to improve customers’ investment knowledge in its Investment Academy.
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 has submitted to the Spanish National Markets and Competition authority (CNMC) a series of unprecedented measures to guarantee financial inclusion, lending to SMEs and competitiveness, especially in Catalonia and the Valencian Community, in order to facilitate a prompt authorization for the combination with Banco Sabadell. The specific measures being presented include: BBVA will not close offices where there is no other branch nearby and will maintain the commercial terms for individuals and SMEs in those postal codes in which there are fewer than four financial institutions¹. In addition, the bank is committed to maintaining, for 18 months, the working capital lines for all SMEs, and the current total credit volume for those that work exclusively with the two banks². These remedies largely mitigate the risks identified by the CNMC, which are mostly focused on certain territories. The bank will continue to collaborate closely with the authority to finalize the remedies agreement and the authorization of the transaction as soon as possible.
¹For the purpose of competition, BBVA and Banco Sabadell are considered as a single entity.
²Except in case of financial deterioration.
The Banker/Private Wealth Magazine has recognized BBVA as the best private bank in Colombia and Peru in the 2024 edition of the awards. The bank has also been singled out as offering the best high net worth client service in Latin America. The Banker also commended BBVA’s private banks operating in Mexico and Spain.
After training more than 50,000 employees in data, BBVA is now busy developing a new program, this time alongside the University of Navarra and focused on the use of tools such as ChatGPT. The aim is to boost productivity by optimizing efficiency in decision-making and daily operations. The program is part of a partnership agreement to train bank employees in data science and new emerging technologies.
Garanti BBVA Kripto aims to provide the highest standards in terms of performance, security, and customer trust for digital assets. It does so by establishing strategic partnerships with Ripple for the services provided by its subsidiary; and with IBM for secure custody solutions for its crypto asset trading platform, which serves more than 14,000 users.
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.
BBVA Chair Carlos Torres Vila participated on Thursday in a new edition of the BBVA Spark Summit in Barcelona, where he made a commitment, in front of more than 400 tech companies and investors, to continue promoting Catalonia as a key center of innovation and entrepreneurship. In this regard, he emphasized that the integration with Banco Sabadell aims to build “a stronger, more competitive and more profitable bank” that provides the support that entrepreneurs and businesses in general need. He also underscored the potential of Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular, as an innovation hub, attracting investors, businesses and talent.
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 is one of the first banks in Visa's global network to use VTAP, a new Visa platform that enables financial institutions to create and manage digital tokens backed by fiat currencies such as the euro and the dollar. BBVA will use VTAP to create tokens on the public Ethereum blockchain with expected live pilots in 2025.
Garanti BBVA continues to add new cryptocurrencies to its mobile app. The bank is now providing service for XRP, the crypto asset with the fifth largest market, and Arbitrum (ARB), a crypto asset that can be transferred on the ERC-20 network. They join Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), Avalanche (AVAX) and Chiliz (CHZ).
Garanti BBVA, Türkiye’s leading digital bank, is all set to stage ‘Istanbul Venture Day’ to support the startup ecosystem and help ramp up innovative fintech solutions. The event will be held at the Salt Galata center on October 24 and is being organized alongside IE University in Spain, with the close support of the Spanish and Italian consulates. It is essentially the Istanbul leg of the ‘Venture Day’ series being held by IE University ahead of the wider Global South Summit.
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 bank is expanding its cryptocurrency custody and trading services to include USD Coin (USDC), a leading stablecoin whose value is pegged to the US dollar. This addition will enable BBVA’s institutional clients to speed up their trading operations by enabling them to transfer value more efficiently with blockchain and secure their stablecoins into BBVA’s vault.
The bank expects to bring in investments from 65 companies in its first year. Mexico has more trade per year with Texas than with Asia.
The Global Startup Awards (GSA), one of the most prestigious events for independent startups, will be held in Türkiye for the first time on September 24-25. With Garanti BBVA as the lead sponsor, GSA aims to recognize innovative startups in the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem, while bringing together a large community of entrepreneurs, investors, VCs, thought leaders, industry benchmarks, ecosystem partners, and other key stakeholders.
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.
Around 40 percent of BBVA’s business customers in Spain have upgraded to the Android PoS terminal, which offers more functionalities than a traditional device. Its operation is intuitive and resembles that of a mobile phone. The main screen displays applications for business management and a payment option. Merchants can easily process returns and view their transaction history.
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.
Garanti BBVA, alongside the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Türkiye (KAGİDER) and Ekonomist, a leading business magazine, is organizing the 18th Women Entrepreneur Competition in Türkiye. Candidates hoping to inspire other women with their success stories have until November 15, 2024 to submit their entries by filling out the form available at www.garantibbvakadingirisimci.com.
Deep learning is a subset of IA within the broader concept of machine learning, so both concepts have a good deal in common, though also differences. Deep learning uses neural networks to draw complex conclusions in a human-like manner. Meanwhile, machine learning is able to make predictions from patterns, although it requires a higher level of human input.
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.
Neural networks, natural language processing, machine learning... AI is an essential partner for BBVA to help its customers manage their savings, manage their investments, analyze their consumption and plan for their next outgoings.
Machine learning has no end of business applications. Consumers and citizens stand to benefit from this technology, which lets them manage their financial health, streamlines their digital processes, or makes their online experience smoother across multiple platforms, among other uses. A basic premise has emerged from this boom: there is nothing mysterious or magical about artificial intelligence (AI), and nor should it seem so. For more complex algorithms, data scientists develop tools to help us understand how they make their decisions.