BBVA Evolves its Advisory Model to Drive Middle-Market Growth
BBVA is gearing up its service model for middle-market companies, combining artificial intelligence and digital tools with specialized advice. This gives relationship managers more time to understand each company’s plans and support its decision-making. For companies, the result is a better client experience, with more agile and personalized service and advice tailored more closely to the needs of each business. Middle-market companies currently account for around 60% of the client base of the bank’s Commercial & Institutional Client Solutions area.
This segment occupies a distinct position within the wider business landscape. The financial needs of middle-market companies tend to differ from those of smaller companies, such as traditional SMEs—particularly in areas such as financing, treasury management and transaction banking—without necessarily reaching the level of complexity of a large multinational corporation. Within Commercial & Institutional Client Solutions, this segment includes companies with a significant degree of sophistication and annual revenue generally ranging from 5 million to 30 million euros, depending on the characteristics of each country.
BBVA is transforming the way it works to provide these companies with a service that truly satisfies their needs. Commercial & Institutional Client Solutions has made notable progress in segmenting and specializing its service offering for these clients and has introduced artificial intelligence (AI) tools that expand the capabilities available for advisory services and risk assessment.
The initiative covers six areas: segmentation; coverage and relationship model; risk and credit; value proposition; operating model; and digital capabilities, data and artificial intelligence. “We want middle-market companies to be able to handle their day-to-day banking easily and digitally, while our relationship managers devote their time to understanding their plans and advising them,” explains Jaime Sáenz de Tejada, Global Head of Commercial & Institutional Client Solutions at BBVA.
The goal is to scale up the model around companies’ real needs: better understanding their plans, simplifying their day-to-day banking, and fusing digital capabilities with specialized advice.
More agile day-to-day banking and advice for key decisions
This evolution is designed to focus relationship managers’ support on needs that require more specialized advice, such as growth and international expansion, sustainability, structured finance, and foreign exchange. To achieve this, BBVA is also targeting tools and processes that reduce operational tasks and allow more time to be devoted to client relationships.
Technology makes day-to-day banking easier, while personal service focuses on more complex needs and decisions that matter to the business: “It’s not about choosing between technology and people, but about using each where it delivers the most value to the client,” explains Jaime Sáenz de Tejada. At the same time, the bank is pursuing initiatives to streamline lending processes, including pre-approved loans, fast-track approval processes, and automatic renewals of financing programs.
Data and AI also play a key role in gaining a better understanding of each company’s needs and providing more tailored solutions. They also allow relationship managers to anticipate client needs and shorten response times. This comprehensive approach is adapted to the characteristics of each market and complemented by a more modular range of transaction banking products and short-term financing, as well as the integration of sustainability into the middle-market value proposition.