Value Creation and Capital Efficiency: Key Pillars of BBVA’s New Growth Model
Promoting a value and capital creation mindset is one of BBVA’s six new priorities under its 2025–2029 Strategic Plan. According to Luisa Gómez Bravo, BBVA’s Chief Financial Officer, “This strategic priority is about changing the way we think, generating capital and value before making each decision.” It also incorporates a long-term perspective, ensuring that growth is profitable and sustainable over time.
In recent years, BBVA has consolidated its position as the leading European bank in growth and profitability. This new strategic priority represents another step forward. It is more than growing and gaining market share in the markets and segments where the bank operates. Beyond earnings, real value comes from quality growth, and from using capital in an intelligent manner. It means going beyond business volumes and thinking more strategically about how capital is generated and deployed.
Capital is a scarce resource, which requires prioritizing quality over quantity in growth; it calls for greater efficiency in the use of capital and more rigorous assessment of where and how the bank’s resources are invested. Therefore, a culture must be adopted where decisions are aligned with creating sustainable value for the company, customers, shareholders and society as a whole.
A way to translate value creation into concrete decision-making would be to compare the return or profit generated by each transaction with its capital cost. The aim is to grow profitably, or above the cost of capital. In this regard, setting clear profitability metrics on the capital employed is key to prioritizing operations with the best return relative to the risk assumed. In this way, we can direct capital towards activities that truly generate value, without compromising solvency. To achieve this, having robust, high-quality data, as well as solid processes, is essential.
Supporting customers’ growth
Value creation must be addressed through product origination and customer relationships to help customers grow. Strengthening relationships with customers by participating in their daily transactions will deliver more sustainable, long-term profitability.
Value creation begins with origination and pricing in commercial areas, where transactions are structured and assessed based on their risk and capital consumption adjusted return. Two levers for value creation come into play here: the pricing process in lending and a holistic view of the customer that guides the organization of the commercial network.
The importance of pricing lies in the fact that every price set, every rate offered to the customer, is a strategic statement. It is where profitability, risk and value proposition intersect. Smart pricing protects margins, enables effective selection, and ensures that each product exceeds the cost of capital. It must also be transparent, so that customers know and understand how these prices are built and the value they receive through the services and products offered to them.
In this regard, the role of the commercial network is essential: it is not a tool for execution, but for transformation. It turns prices into value-based relationships, opportunities into sustainable business and volume into profitability. Most importantly, it integrates a radical client perspective into everything the bank does, ensuring that the experience of interacting with BBVA is unique.
Customers who trust BBVA choose to grow with the bank
Strategic pricing and an inspired, customer-focused network also mean driving another engine of value creation: cross-selling. In this context, cross-selling becomes a natural meeting point between the value creation strategy and customer focus: customers who trust BBVA choose to grow with the bank by signing up for additional products and services, such as insurance, asset management, private banking and payments. These are the so-called ‘capital-light businesses’, capable of creating value and generating results with a lower capital consumption than other business lines.
Optimizing capital, a competitive advantage
In an increasingly competitive and regulated financial environment, mobilizing the balance sheet is no longer an option: it is a strategic necessity that enables resources to be unlocked and to be redirected to where they truly generate impact. Optimizing capital is not only about meeting regulatory requirements; it is about multiplying growth capacity, financing transformative projects and innovating with responsibility and a forward-looking vision.
The bank typically releases capital as customers repay their loans. However, this process can be accelerated through balance sheet management, using risk sharing solutions, such as securitizations, portfolio sales or credit insurance.
In short, with this new strategic priority, BBVA is reinforcing its commitment to a profitable and sustainable growth model, based on efficient capital use and long-term value creation. Beyond financial results, this commitment entails a profound cultural transformation: embedding value creation into every decision, every product and every customer relationship. A vision that drives BBVA to continue leading the transformation of the financial sector toward a more responsible, long-term-oriented banking model.