BBVA’s Open Innovation unit is charged with ensuring the bank stays up to date with the latest fintech disruption happening anywhere in the world.

Unequivocally identifying people online and respecting their privacy remain major challenges for companies and a growing cause of concern for users. Covault is committed to a model whereby banks take on the role of the verifiers of users’ data, which is in keeping with the trend within the ecosystem.

A new survey by BBVA owned SME digital banking specialist Holvi has shown how nearly half of the UK big business workforce would like to set up their own company, but fears around financial management and redtape are stopping them.

Growth, particularly profitable growth, is the lifeblood of long lasting - and more often than not - the most innovative companies.

BBVA’s ‘Ninja’ initiative is a pioneering program designed to allow any employee to acquire technological knowledge and skills thanks to the use of gamification techniques and training offered by the best tech companies and educational platforms in the market. Following its success in the units more linked to the Group’s technological transformation –where nearly 9,000 employees are currenlty enrolled–, it will expand to new areas of the bank in 2020.

The European Research Council has presented one of its most prestigious research grants to  Stephen Hansen, an Associate Professor of Economics and researcher at the Imperial College of London, and previously at the University of Oxford. With this grant, Hansen will start a research project on big data together with BBVA Research.