Onur Genç: “AI Will Transform Banking for the Better, the Key Lies in Scaling Its Benefits Across the Organization”
Artificial intelligence will bring about a faster and more profound transformation than the digital revolution, drastically altering customer relations, value propositions and the way organizations operate. This was the message BBVA CEO Onur Genç delivered in his presentation at the fintech conference Money2020, where he stressed that differentiation in this new era will hinge on how capable organizations are of transforming and scaling AI across their operations, an area where BBVA is already taking decisive steps. In addition, he underscored that the bank has established a very clear roadmap to build a more personalized, accessible and proactive banking experience for its clients.
BBVA returned to the stage of Money 2020 Europe, the leading European event on innovation in financial services, held in Amsterdam, to explain how to approach a new phase of transformation, driven by artificial intelligence (AI). After being one of the pioneering banks in the digitization of the sector, the bank sees AI as an even more profound and faster shift. It has the potential to redefine customer relations, how employees work, and how organizations carry out their processes. Onur Genç told an audience of fintechs, neobanks and investors that BBVA is prepared to repeat the success of its digitization, in the age of AI.
BBVA’s CEO shared an optimistic view of the revolution driven by this technology. From his perspective, AI is an opportunity to rethink financial services for the benefit of customers, who will receive much more personalized and contextualized financial advice, as well as an increasingly conversational and proactive experience; and of employees, whose productivity will increase across their roles and responsibilities.
To take advantage of this great opportunity, BBVA has a clear roadmap and has taken major steps toward integrating AI tools to completely transform the Group. Over 100,000 employees have access to ChatGPT Enterprise and Gemini, with high regular usage rates (70 percent) and time savings on routine tasks. BBVA has also developed a strategic plan with eight lines of action that cover the bank’s entire value chain, from customer service and risk management to software development and operations. “We are seeing a huge impact in all those areas,” said Genç. In this regard, BBVA is seeing 50 percent time savings in software development and testing tasks, a 78 percent reduction in time required to record user complaints and significant advances in the automation of customer inquiries.
While these initial experiences with AI show promise, what will truly make a difference and where BBVA is focusing its efforts is on “how to industrialize the development, creation and management of agents in the organization. The key lies in how we scale up AI – because in order to scale its benefits, we have to be able to scale its deployment,” said Genç. In order to address this challenge, BBVA recently created the new global area, AI Transformation, whose main goal is to scale AI throughout the Group.
This organizational transformation comes in response to a very clear view of the new operating model at the bank, where agents can automate tasks, make decisions, interact with people and collaborate with each other to execute entire processes autonomously.
Agents and humans
BBVA is aware that this transformation is not merely technological, as the human component and trust remain essential. Therefore, all of the bank’s AI creation platforms will always include a cross-cutting layer to manage security and the responsible use of AI throughout the bank. Just as the bank onboards new employees, providing them tools, defining their responsibilities and establishing frameworks for action, BBVA will apply a similar approach to AI agents, with standardized environments, secure access to systems and data, integrated permissions and controls, continuous evaluation, traceability and human supervision.
For BBVA, trust will continue to be the distinguishing factor in the age of AI. Onur Genç recalled that trust was one of the reasons that banks have retained a relevant position against new digital competitors, adding that “it will be even more important with artificial intelligence.”
Onur Genç ended his presentation at Money 2020 by offering his vision of how customers will interact with banks in 2030, predicting a much more natural, personal and proactive relationship. According to the BBVA CEO, AI will make it possible to speak directly with the app to carry out routine tasks, and the bank will be able to offer recommendations tailored to the context and needs. Therefore, banking will evolve from products and transactions to advice, financial well-being and customers’ everyday peace of mind.