Murat Kalkan: “Our Secret Sauce Combines the Trust and Product Range of an Incumbent with the Digital Experience and Pricing of a Neobank”

After its success in Italy, where it has signed up more than 750,000 customers in four years, BBVA took the playbook to Germany in June, earning an early response that “exceeded our expectations.” Kalkan’s mandate is clear: “to power growth beyond the Group’s core markets.” He isn’t intimidated by neobanks: “We aim to reach profitability in every market on a faster timeline than successful neobanks.”

Question: The Digital Banks unit was created a little over a year ago within the BBVA Group. What’s the goal of this area?

Answer: Our core banking profits have been growing strongly within the existing footprint of BBVA. Yet, aligned with our “Thinking Big” value, we always look for opportunities to go further. Within this context, the purpose of the Digital Banks area is to enter new markets to open up avenues of profitable growth beyond BBVA’s core markets. If we look around us, we see that the world has become profoundly digital, and this is transforming customer expectations from financial services. Today, consumers demand immediacy, frictionless experiences, and personalization from their banks as the standard, just as they do with Amazon, Apple, or Spotify in their day-to-day lives.

In addition, we see how new digital players such as Revolut or Nubank are becoming strongly established as competitors and growing rapidly both in customers and revenues. Their main advantage is that they provide innovative, simple and attractive customer experiences, while also having the ability to scale their business with a very efficient cost structure.

"The world has become profoundly digital, and this is transforming customer expectations from financial services."

In this context, BBVA set out to leverage its leadership in the digitalization of financial services and its technology to enter new markets with a lean, scalable, and competitive structure. The goal is to grow profitably by building 100% digital banks that combine the best of both worlds: the solidity, trust, and breadth of products of a global bank with the agility, pricing, and experience of a neobank.

We have also set ourselves the goal of proving that this model can be replicated in different geographies, relying on our technology and the Group’s talent. We first launched in Italy and have just landed in Germany.

Our goal is to reach profitability in every market we operate on a faster timeline than successful neobanks, while continuing to enter attractive markets that fuel the Group’s growth. At the same time, Digital Banks, where we also manage investments in Atom (UK) and Neon (Brazil), serves as an innovation hub, spreading lessons learned from our digital banks across the Group.

Q: How do BBVA Italy and BBVA Germany differentiate from the competition? In other words, what is our “secret sauce” or unique value proposition?

A.: Our differentiating value lies in combining the best of neobanks and incumbents. In simple terms, we combine the strong trust and large product and service range of the incumbents with the digital experience and attractive pricing of neobanks.

In other words, compared to incumbents, which account for more than 95% of most banking markets, we level the playing field in trust and product suite, and differentiate in customer experience and rates and fees. And, in competing with the neobanks, we get ahead in trust with BBVA’s backing and cover all of the everyday financial needs of customers versus offering a narrow product set.

Our proposal aims to outperform the competition in each of the five key dimensions of a banking growth framework we use: trust, customer experience, price, features, and product.

In terms of products, in Italy and Germany we have launched 100% digital banks, but with a universal banking proposal: we don’t limit ourselves to just an account or a card, as many neobanks do. Instead, we offer a full catalog of products: accounts, deposits, loans, mortgages, insurance, investments, etc.

In terms of trust, our offering is backed by a European-licensed global financial services institution with a local IBAN and deposits guaranteed up to €100,000.

Regarding customer experience, BBVA has been repeatedly recognized for having the best banking app, and we have exported that experience to Italy and Germany. This way, we compete head-to-head with digital banks in simplicity and experience. And even though we are 100% digital, we have not given up the human touch. We offer customer service with advisors available 24/7 in the local language.

As to pricing, thanks to a lean cost structure, BBVA Digital Banks can also offer highly competitive products. In both Italy and Germany, our deposit rate offering is among the most competitive in those markets.

And about features, we bring customers the rich set of features incumbents can provide in a simple and easy manner, again combining the breadth of features of incumbents with the simplicity of neobanks.

In short, the "secret sauce" of BBVA Digital Banks is being a truly digital universal bank: maintaining the solidity, trust, and breadth of product of a traditional bank, while competing with neobanks on digital experience, pricing, and innovative features.

Q: How is the bank doing in Italy now that it is about to reach its fourth anniversary?

A.: Italy has become a great success story and provides proof that our model works. In less than four years, we have surpassed 750,000 customers, more than doubling the original targets, which foresaw reaching 100,000 customers annually for the first five years. Today, we are two years ahead of schedule and expect to exceed one million customers before the end of 2026.

We manage more than €6 billion in deposits, even after reducing the interest rates offered to customers compared to the initial launch offer. This shows the resilience of our model and the trust our customers place in the bank.

But the most important aspect is customer perception. BBVA Italy has been recognized as the bank with the best NPS in the country, according to Bain & Co. We are on Forbes’ list of the best banks in Italy, and Il Corriere della Sera chose us as the bank with the best customer service among all digital banks in the country.

We are very satisfied with our progress in Italy and will continue competing and working to keep growing and consolidating our position in the Italian market.

Q: And how is BBVA Germany performing? Are growth forecasts being met?

A.: Germany is a complex market, but also fertile ground for growth. It is the largest banking market in Europe. While it is very fragmented, we landed last June with a unique proposition, and the early results show we are on the right path.

"We provide access to over 70,000 physical contact points for cash deposits and withdrawals in Germany".

Our entry was more ambitious than in Italy in 2021. Compared to our Italian offering, in Germany we launched a product range that was far wider and more competitive: fee-free accounts, 3% interest for the first months, and 3% cashback on all purchases, online and offline.

Moreover, even though we don’t have physical branches, we provide access to over 70,000 physical contact points for cash deposits and withdrawals, which removes one of the main barriers of purely digital models. All of this is combined with 24/7 customer service in German.

The reception from the German market has been very strong. At launch, customer demand far exceeded our expectations. This confirms that there is room for a proposition that combines clear pricing, an advanced digital experience, and the trust that a major bank inspires.

Q: The Digital Banks unit also manages investments in Atom and Neon. What role do our investments in Atom (UK) and Neon (Brazil) play, and what have we learned from them?

A.: Our investments in Atom and Neon are strategic. We don’t participate in their daily management, but they allow us to learn firsthand from innovative digital models and highly dynamic markets.

Atom was the UK’s first fully digital bank. In less than a decade it has built a solid proposition based on mortgages, business loans, and savings, all through an app that has the highest Trustpilot rating (4.8) among UK banks. And in recent years, Atom has established a track record of continued profitability. In last year's results (July 2025) they posted earnings of €28.6 million/£25 million.

Neon, for its part, has more than 30 million customers. Its strategy focuses on offering accounts, cards, and credit to traditionally excluded segments of the population. Its social impact is as significant as its growth, and it is an example of how technology can democratize access to banking in emerging markets.

These experiences serve as innovation laboratories for us. We test different approaches to products, technology, and customer relationships, and then transfer those learnings to the rest of the Group. This strengthens our digital offering and allows us to lead the digital transformation of the financial sector.

Q: And finally, what is your assessment of this first year of the global Digital Banks unit?

A.: Taking stock, we find our performance over the past year has been exceptional. This was an intense period in which we firmly established a global team, formed local teams in new markets, and proved that our model is both scalable and competitive.

In short, this first year shows that we have opened up a firm new path of profitable growth for BBVA. We have now advanced fully from vision to execution, and we have done so with tangible results that strengthen our ambition to lead digital banking in Europe and beyond.