BBVA inaugurates FinAI Summit, a global conference exploring AI in finance
From May 5 to 8, BBVA will organize the first FinAI Summit, featuring talks, panel discussions and master classes, in an event designed to be the key forum on how AI could reshape financial services and products, and how this could impact society at large. Speakers will include international experts such as Kay Firth-Butterfield, previously head of artificial intelligence at the World Economic Forum. The public can attend online by registering on the FinAI Summit website.
FinAI Summit will take place over four days at BBVA’s headquarters in Mexico, Colombia, Türkiye and Spain. It will explore how AI can help manage financial risks, predict economic crises and hyper-personalize services. Conversations will also cover how businesses can responsibly develop and adopt AI, as well as the technology’s role in creative work.
By opening the event to the public (registering through finaisummit.com), BBVA hopes to spark a broader debate about AI, moving beyond specialist circles and involving society as a whole in shaping the future of intelligent services. “Artificial intelligence is driving rapid changes in how we think, work and organize ourselves,” says Antonio Bravo, BBVA’s Global Head of Data. “Our goal with the FinAI Summit is to tackle the key questions about AI’s role in financial services and its broader impact on society. We want the adoption of AI to be transparent and responsible, and above all, leave no one behind.”
Each day will open with a keynote speech by a leading international expert. In Spain, Kay Firth-Butterfield, former head of artificial intelligence at the World Economic Forum and now CEO of Good Tech Advisory, will discuss the ethical development of AI. In Turkey, Sertaç Doğanay, a prominent advocate for responsibly bringing digital innovation into businesses, will speak on the same topic. In Mexico and Colombia, Raphael Douady, a French mathematician and economist, and Sergio Álvarez-Teleña, an expert in using AI and quantitative analysis for financial decisions, will examine AI’s potential to manage financial risks amid increasingly complex global markets. To explore AI’s impact on human creativity, Maya Ackerman, CEO and co-founder of WaveAI, a startup using AI for music composition, will speak at the conference in Spain (view full agenda).
Along with other guest speakers and BBVA experts, they will join roundtable discussions looking at how artificial intelligence could reshape finance by anticipating crises or improving risk management. They will also consider how AI can strengthen rather than replace human creativity, how businesses can uphold ethical standards and limit their environmental footprint, and what safeguards are necessary to prevent cultural bias or inappropriate use of AI-generated content.
During the first three days, FinAI Summit will also host several masterclasses teaching practical skills. Participants will learn how to enhance customer service using generative voice AI (voicebots), how to shape data into clear and compelling visual narratives, and how to put machine learning, reinforcement learning and large language models to practical use in business settings.
FinAI Summit expands on BBVA's earlier internal event, DataFest, which brought together 5,500 data scientists, engineers, architects and specialists to share insights and latest advances. Now open to the wider public, FinAI Summit seeks to become the leading forum on artificial intelligence in finance for non-specialist audiences, offering clear answers to the crucial questions raised by this transformative technology.