Op-ed article by Carlos Torres Vila, published in Spanish business newspaper Expansión on November 26, 2018.

The mobile banking app is the fastest-growing communication channel between banks and their customers today. For customers who use their banking app, it has become their preferred and most frequent channel of engagement. Still, most of the functionalities for banking apps are targeted towards servicing with limited new product sales capabilities. So, why don’t banks unleash the full potential of that digital channel?

"HR Goes Agile". That was the headline of a recent issue of Harvard Business Review on talent management. Further than any academic paper, this is already a reality in BBVA. In fact, we may well be the first company with over 100.000 employees to execute a complete (all team), transversal (holding and countries) transformation of the HR function into a new Agile organization and governance model.

In less than a month, BBVA successfully conducted two pilots that demonstrate how blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve financial processes in corporate banking. The first pilot allowed us to close a loan of €75 million euros with Indra and the most recent with Repsol for a credit facility of €325 million.

After several years of unconventional monetary policy, the European Central Bank has announced an important step toward monetary normalization: the withdrawal of its asset-purchasing program, known as Quantitative Easing (QE), which began in 2015. From September, the ECB will reduce its purchases by half until the program is fully retired in December. In doing so, the institution is following in the footsteps of the U.S. Federal Reserve. The next phase—rate increases—will not occur until the summer 2019, at the earliest, according to guidance issued by the ECB, which thus provides a trace of certainty in an otherwise uncertain global economic landscape.