At the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) 2019 Global Conference, Garanti BBVA presented their 2018 annual consolidated report, which emphasized how important empathy is to the bank’s corporate culture and how this influences their approach to customers,clients and employees. Sinem Ozonur, BBVA Head of Consolidated Reporting at Garanti BBVA, was the first representative from a Turkish company to take the stage and address some of the more note-worthy topics.

BBVA is in the midst of its transformation process, and the creation of global products is one of the key pillars in its strategy to become a fully digital business. Early on the bank recognized the opportunity afforded by global product development and the upshot represented by being able to share best practices between countries. There are already measurable examples in different countries like Mexico, Spain, and Turkey, which corroborate the effectiveness of this strategy and its ensuing projects.

Creating global products is one of the keys to BBVA’s transformation and represents one of its main challenges to becoming a digital company. The goal is to develop solutions that incorporate the Group’s best practices and whose components can be reused. In doing so, the bank is more efficient, can go to market more quickly, and creates a single user experience across the bank’s operating countries.

BBVA collaborated with a research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop a model that can reduce the level of false positives in fraudulent card transactions up to 54 percent, thanks to algorithms based on machine learning.

Interactive fairy tales, being in outer space or a radical remake of the classic game Tetris. These are some of the dream plays to take your first steps in this new audiovisual language.

BBVA’s digital transformation has always been as much about serving customer needs as it has been about securing the future of the bank. In fact the two are synonymous, by ensuring customers can bank when, where and how they want to – including on the device of their choice – BBVA is building a bank that better serves their needs.

BBVA has announced it is part of the consortium of corporate businesses and banks taking part in a new initiative by SWIFT aimed at speeding up cross border transactions.

BBVA’s drive towards delivering a world class digital banking experience has taken another step forward. Over the past year the bank has seen an almost twofold year on year increase in the number of products and services its customers and clients are taking-up via digital channels.

Fair-trade coffee, quality guarantee, ecological tomatoes… consumers read the labels on the things they eat. But is there any way of checking that what they say is correct? In order to do so, you would need a register of the processes to which the product has been submitted, something blockchain can do.

The head of the BBVA Data & Analytics’ Edge team, José Antonio Rodríguez-Serrano, who coordinates the innovation area in BBVA’s center of excellence in data science, shares his insights into five key questions to understand the implications of this exponential technology in different economical sectors and spheres of society.

The widespread use of mobile devices on a day-to-day basis brings with it the risk of very personal information such as bank details, photographs, messages, contacts and emails and a long list of private details falling into unwanted hands.

‘Blockchain’ is still at level 0 in the video game industry, but it has a promising future.

Smart speakers are the vanguard of the so-called environmental technology, which transcends the limitations of screens. For the moment, Amazon reigns supreme over a market in which Apple is about to disembark.

Concepts such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science are increasingly at the center of the debate about the digital revolution. But why is everyone talking about them? Do we really understand these concepts, or the implications they have on our evolution as a society?

Whether it’s chatting, finding your soul mate or jotting down notes, there are few things that twentysomethings and younger people can’t do on a smartphone. With so many applications available for smartphones, which are the ones most preferred by millennials?

Wearables manufacturers are changing their focus from fitness and health, to improving user productivity and connectivity. That´s the great challenge facing a business whose size is expected to double between 2017 and 2021.

The world’s tech giants are competing to dominate the field of Artificial Intelligence, which is likely to become the key technology of the digital economy. Who’s leading in this race and what consequences will it have?

Cloud computing offers online computing services. This is the basic definition of a technology that has played a key role in the digital transformation of many sectors, including the financial sector. Managing services on the cloud was never so easy and fast.

The new technologies, and their presence in everyday life, are radically changing the way we look at entertainment, social relationships and work. They have also created new professions that do not yet have a set educational pathway, such as videogame developer.

Garanti Bank’s online banking service was named second best in Europe by Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. The Turkish bank also earned a best-in-class mention for facilitating daily banking operations, such as viewing recent transactions, checking account balances or moving money.

The most impressive thing at this year’s Blockchain Summit in London was the enthusiasm and wide array of use cases for blockchain on show. Starting with its origins of digital currency and current evolution to ICOs (the abbreviation for initial coin offering) to applications in the energy and real estate sectors, there is seemingly no problem too big that it can’t be solved via blockchain technology.

One of the biggest financial stories of 2018 will be the entry into force of the European Union’s Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2). For customers, the measure will mean faster, simpler and more secure digital payments. And for banks and the fintech ecosystem, it presents a great opportunity.

The APIfication phenomenon is by no means restricted to the banking sector. At the API Forum held this week in Madrid, insurance and entertainment companies participated, together with BBVA, to discuss the keys to designing APIs capable of attracting developers.

A review of the year’s big winners in the fintech universe reveals China’s growing role in the world’s digital economy.

Car sharing and driverless cars are shaking the very foundations of the automobile industry. Will technology make car ownership obsolete?

“Sandbox” is one of the most common words in the fintech universe. In the financial industry, the term refers to a mechanism for developing regulation that keeps up with the fast pace of innovation.

Samsung and BBVA today presented the iris scanning feature, which will allow BBVA customers with Samsung-compatible smartphones to log on to the bank’s Spanish mobile banking app just by looking at their displays[1].

BBVA’s Group Executive Chairman is convinced that technological advances will be accompanied by greater progress and well-being, but he is also calling for policies and structural reforms that are capable of mitigating the costs of the transition to the new digital society. Supporting research and education, promoting competition and transparency in the markets and developing new employment policies and social protection systems were among the recommendations Francisco González shared at an event organized by El Periódico de Catalunya and BBVA in Barcelona.

Madrid hosted last week the Service Design Global Conference (SDGC17), a leading event in the world of service design that pays special attention to how this discipline is changing the world of banking. BBVA took part in one of the sessions to explain how design is, without a doubt, a key element in the success of its financial products and in satisfying customer needs at a time of great challenges for banking.

One of the recurrent themes at this year’s BBVA Open Summit was the importance of customer centricity. A great example of this was the panel session featuring BBVA’s Global Head of Marketing, Design and Responsible Business, Rob Brown and 11:FS Co-Founder Jason Bates.

From a small town in Burgos province, the mobile robotics engineering firm ASTI shows that digitization provides an opportunity to restore the fabric of industry.

Year 2049. Three decades have passed since Richard Deckard began hunting down and retiring Nexus 6 models. The Wallace Corporation has built an empire on the ruins of Tyrell Corp, designing a new generation of replicants, more obliging and integrated in society.  Through the implementation of memories, the new models have an emotional foundation that makes them more stable than their predecessors, much more similar to humans.

Esri, a global leader in Geographic Information Systems and BBVA API Market, have rolled out a collaboration project to embed BBVA’s ‘API PayStats’ in Esri’s platform. The aim is to enable companies and public institutions to make business decisions based on customers’ actual commercial behavior.

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González presided over the first edition of the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) – BBVA Foundation Research Awards. These accolades recognized the work of six young Ph.D. recipients who are conducting high-level research in Spain.

The objective is not an easy one to achieve: making sure that the products that reach the market are the ones customers need and demand. The task is even more complicated if production must be speeded up, in order to reach the market before the competition. Tech companies were pioneers in facing this challenge; they did so by using agile methods, a way of working that has played a key role in the success of companies like Google and Spotify, and which BBVA has made a fundamental tool in accelerating its digital transformation.

An artificial inteligence startup aiming to give everyone their own virtual personal money manager  has been named as the winner of the 2017 BBVA Open Talent Competition. Israeli high-growth outfit, Change, beat off strong competition from almost a thousand entries from dozens of country around the world to secure top spot in the world’s biggest fintech competition.

One billion people experiencing firsthand all that virtual reality has to offer that’s Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious goal. Soon, he will launch a unique new tool to help achieve it: a pair of virtual reality glasses called Oculus Go, which will sell at a relatively affordable price and work without a computer or smartphone.

Sex, religion, and politics, along with harmony and trust, gave birth to money. At first, there was barter. Later came coins and bills, which have now given way to the network age, a world in which space and time have disappeared and transactions are conducted in bits. In order to understand the present and predict the future, Chris Skinner reflects on the history of money in his book, ‘The Next Step: Exponential Life’, which can be downloaded online free of charge as part of BBVA’s OpenMind project.

The development of new technologies as a means to alleviate workloads is part of the day to day running of businesses. Increasingly, robots, artificial intelligence, and computer algorithms are taking over humans in the execution of mechanical tasks. However, many theoreticians are wary of the consequences this development will bring upon the workplace. Darrel M. West discusses the impact of these emerging technologies on society in the book ‘The Next Step. Exponential Life’, which can be downloaded for free from the BBVA OpenMind project website.

Companies usually don’t brag about not having a clear roadmap, but Amazon is different. The head of technology at the company since 2005 explains that constant change and trial and error are essential to Amazon’s innovation policy.

BBVA’s Group Executive Chairman stressed the importance of mathematics as “the backbone of well-being in a global, technological society” at the BBVA Foundation and Royal Spanish Mathematical Society (RSME in Spanish) awards ceremony for the best young researchers.

BBVA’s Group Executive Chairman said that developing the best banking application in the world (according to Forrester) has been a work that “has taken many years.” To get to this point, Francisco González underscored that “the most important thing was when we adopted ‘agile’ work methodologies that allow us to deliver upgrades every three months.” The application helps customers make better financial decisions and manage their financial lives better. Ultimately, he stated, we “want to be the best adviser of our customers.”

BBVA’s Chief Financial Officer, Jaime Sáenz de Tejada explained this morning that “digital transformation is affecting all areas of the bank, and customers are the first ones to feel this. The results are already tangible. And, more and more, customers are turning to digital channels,” he said, in the Eighth Financial Encounter organized by the business daily Expansión and KPMG.

Madrid tourists spend more near monuments and museums than those in Barcelona. People living in Vila de Gràcia in Barcelona have the same lifestyle as those in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña. Sant Antoni and Poble Sec are places that are popular to go out to dinner and then for a drink, and in Madrid, the Lavapies neighborhood is undergoing a transformation toward more cultural activity.

For BBVA Compass, every step of the customer journey is important, from account opening to basic account maintenance, which is why the bank’s new front-end sales and service application is a key tool for its branch team.

Dubbed Client Vista, the tool connects the bank’s real-time core banking platform to its sales and service team giving them better flexibility to assist the client and discuss products and services that are relevant to their personal needs. For the customer, the impact of the change is minimal, according to BBVA Compass Consumer Director of Business Planning and Client Vista Program Owner Shawn O’Brien, but the application was designed specifically to meet their needs.

A study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) compares the real impact of fintech companies on the world of finance to their own predictions two years ago. Their conclusion: the fintech companies haven´t met many of their forecasts.

The Global Fintech Report 2017’, published by the consulting firm PwC, forsees a new era in which financial institutions and fintech firms cooperate more closely, in order to overcome their respective weaknesses.

Machines are getting smarter: trading trillions of dollars in stocks around the world, driving cars, performing surgical operations (570,000 last year), managing and running entire hotels, making cocktails on cruise ships in the Caribbean… truly, we are living in the age of the machine.

The experts at Blockchain Day 1 all regretted that the speculative aspects of blockchain technology could mask its main benefits.

Toys are evolving at the same pace as technology.

Known as smart toys, they already incorporate technology. They can access the Internet, interact with children and compile all types of information that is put online.