BBVA deploys ‘The Eight,’ its strategy to transform the financial experience with AI

As explained by Antonio Bravo, Head of Data at BBVA, in a recent interview with Spanish newspaper Expansión, the goal is to harness AI in order to radically improve the client experience and also the way the organization is run. More precisely, BBVA aims to anticipate people’s needs, support them in a more proactive and meaningful way, and offer personalized solutions at a scale that has so far proved to be impossible. Moreover, AI will free teams from repetitive tasks, enhance their analytical and creative capabilities, and speed up decision-making by delivering more accurate and contextualized information, spanning key areas such as customer proposals, risk management and software development.

With this strategy, BBVA is laying the foundations for a comprehensive transformation that will permeate all units of the bank. It goes beyond the adoption of new tools or the automation of isolated processes, representing instead a new breed of banking in which technology and human talent are fused to deliver a more efficient, people-centered service.

‘The Eight’ is structured around eight deeply interconnected initiatives.

Six ‘robots’ transforming customer relationships and the way of working…

Each of these ‘robots’, or solutions, targets a specific area of the bank and comprises the agents, AI tools, and developments needed to build the aspirational vision defined for each one.

1. Advisor (Blue). BBVA’s Blue virtual assistant is evolving to support each individual throughout their financial life, resolving queries, enabling transactions 24/7 in a multimodal, conversational way, offering personalized advice, and anticipating customer needs. The goal is for “Blue to be a key factor in customer relationships,” Antonio Bravo told Expansión. Blue is already capable of handling more than 150 queries and can also carry out simple transactions. In future versions, it will evolve into a truly intelligent financial assistant supporting millions of customers.
2. AI Banker. The augmented banker gives BBVA’s commercial and sales teams a suite of useful AI tools and capabilities to ensure that they have genuinely relevant information in real time, personalized recommendations, and support freeing them from repetitive tasks. Thanks to these capabilities, relationship managers will be able to spend more time with customers, improve the quality of advice, and ultimately deliver a higher value proposition, fully focused on helping customers achieve their goals.
3. Risks. In a critical field such as risk management, this ‘robot’ aims to provide risk analysts with the tools they need to increase productivity and improve decision-making with up-to-date information, while keeping the human analyst very much at the center of the decision and ensuring regulatory compliance.
4. Operations and processes. This solution is geared toward extreme automation and the end-to-end redesign of key processes using AI. Aside from automating repetitive tasks, it will reduce response times and minimize errors, both in back office operations and in customer interactions.
5. Software development. This robot seeks to automate the software lifecycle, with AI acting as a copilot for developers, helping generate code and detect errors, suggest improvements, and accelerate testing and deployments. The goal is to deliver new functionalities and digital experiences to customers at greater speed, while improving security and quality standards.
6. Connected: a personal agent for each employee. BBVA employees will be empowered with capabilities and knowledge enabling them to create an ‘alter ego,’ meaning a proactive digital ‘second self’ capable of streamlining everyday administrative and repetitive tasks. From preparing documents to analyzing information or simplifying internal processes, this ‘robot’ will boost individual productivity and free up time for higher-impact activities. With the right training, BBVA employees are poised to become AI ‘superusers.’

…and two pillars enabling transformation at scale

For these six developments to operate coherently and securely, cross-cutting capabilities are required to ensure data availability, technological integration, and scalability.

7. Data, the fuel driving AI. This pillar aims to ensure that all necessary data are available on BBVA’s platforms in real time, so that employees, AI models and agents alike have access to information that is fit for use in terms of quality, governance, and security.
8. AI architecture and capabilities for a robust, connected ecosystem. BBVA is busy building the technological capabilities and architecture needed to allow all its AI robots to operate in an integrated, secure, and efficient manner. This ecosystem enables agile deployment of new models, tool integration, scaling use cases across geographies, and ensuring regulatory compliance. It is the technological bedrock that will allow ‘The Eight’ to grow and evolve over time.

These eight initiatives represent an ambitious roadmap designed to transform both customer relationships and internal efficiency, leveraging data and robust technology to spearhead a new era in banking.

Years in the making

‘The Eight’ is the latest step forward in an ongoing journey in which the bank has been investing heavily for the past ten years, focusing on data, analytical talent, and technological capabilities. In 2017, BBVA made data a strategic pillar by setting up a global Data unit operating at the highest echelons of the organization, reflecting its firm belief that rigorous information—intelligently applied—can be a key driver of differentiation and growth. This was soon joined by the rollout of AI Factories, as spaces where business teams and data scientists collaborate to build high-impact global products, and which now have hubs in Spain, Mexico, and Türkiye. Alliances with tech partners such as Google have also been pivotal in developing advanced capabilities and modernizing the bank’s digital infrastructure.

This commitment has led to relentless improvements in BBVA’s app and digital services over the years, which have increasingly featured advanced AI-based functionalities to establish a more contextual and useful relationship model for customers. In 2025, the bank launched a further evolution of the app, incorporating additional generative AI models to further personalize the services that support customers in achieving their financial goals.

Following the emergence of generative AI, other major milestones have been reached. For one, BBVA became the first European bank to sign an agreement with OpenAI, thanks to which upward of 11,000 bank employees have access to ChatGPT Enterprise in a secure, corporate environment and have created more than 20,000 task-specific GPTs, of which more than 4,000 are used frequently. Internal metrics point to time savings of over 76% in certain tasks, together with a substantial productivity boost: employees claim savings of nearly three hours per week, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities for customers and the business. This agreement will culminate at the end of 2025 in a major strategic partnership under which OpenAI will actively collaborate in the development of ‘The Eight,’ and BBVA will extend ChatGPT Enterprise to its more than 120,000 employees around the world.

Meanwhile, BBVA remains in close contact with the wider ecosystem in what is a highly dynamic environment. One example is the extension of its long-standing agreement with Google Cloud, which has enabled more than 87,000 employees to naturally integrate Gemini into their daily work environment to draft documents, crunch data, create content, or prepare presentations more efficiently. The bank has also equipped its development teams with more than 15,000 GitHub Copilot licenses, accelerating code generation and deployment with enhanced security and quality.