Transformation

Exoticca, a leading company in the digitization of big-ticket travel, has announced the signing of a €4 million finance agreement with BBVA Spark. This loan agreement will facilitate the company's expansion in Latin America. The financing is supported by the European Union and the European Investment Fund under the InvestEU Fund program.

In the past two years, BBVA added 7,187 professionals in the data and technology field to its workforce - a figure it plans to increase in 2024 with 2,700 new hires. Of this amount, 1,225 will take place in Spain for the bank’s headquarters in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. Technology talent has become a key aspect of the Group’s digital strategy.

Data is a strategic lever for BBVA, which has been working for years to make it accessible across the entire organization so that it supports every business decision. In this endeavor, Domo has become an essential tool, as Elena Alfaro, Global Head of Data and Advanced Analytics in Client Solutions at BBVA, explains in this new success story, which showcases the value of this platform in monitoring progress toward strategic objectives, spotting trends and enabling the bank to swiftly tailor products and services to customer needs.

BBVA has implemented a business banking service model that speeds up the response to the financial needs of multinationals when they expand into new markets. Employing more than 2,500 specialized managers, the new "Cross-Border" model cuts the requirements for opening non-resident accounts by up to 70 percent, thus drastically shortening the time required to set up new subsidiaries. BBVA Business Banking already works with more than 120,000 subsidiaries of business groups in 14 countries.

The bank has signed a collaboration agreement with the Legendaryum Metaverse to explore how immersive digital environments could change the remote relationship model both between internal areas and with customers. BBVA has opened a remote meeting room in Legendaryum to analyze the potential of these spaces and how they change the way users relate to each other and help in the design of specific banking services.

On this portal, import export companies can access the wide range of solutions that BBVA offers them, such as the international commerce sections from the different local BBVA websites around the world, which help them to streamline these operations. Global Trade Finance also gives the companies access to specialized information that supports them in their international transactions, such as customs paperwork or tenders, with updated data from more than 170 countries.

BBVA is giving a boost to its Pivot Commercial Cards platform by adding support for  Mastercard cards expense management. This platform allows greater control over the use of corporate cards by simplifying the review and authorisation processes for expenses. It already manages daily purchases for more than 85,000 employees of client companies using BBVA's corporate cards across eight countries.

BBVA joins Banca March, Banco Santander, CaixaBank, Generali, Inetum, Línea Directa Aseguradora, MAPFRE, Repsol, Unicaja Banco and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the entities that launched Dalion in 2020. The project works on an innovative digital identity management model based on blockchain, which allows each person full control of their data.

BBVA has chosen Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), to take the most sophisticated operations of the Corporate and Investment Banking area (BBVA CIB) to the cloud. Specifically, the new platform provides greater computing power to make calculations related to financial markets faster, more accurate and more efficient.

Jose Luis Elechiguerra, Global Head of Engineering at BBVA, faces 2023 with a focus on continuing to evolve the technology platform to provide new capabilities that allow us to offer the best solutions to customers. To do this, he maintains his commitment to disruptive technologies such as the cloud, artificial intelligence, big data or biometrics, without losing sight of the digital regulatory framework, as he mentioned in the CIO Spain interview.

BBVA customers in Spain can now choose how they would like to view app content. The bank has added a dark mode option to the app in Spain, which eases navigation and lessens eye fatigue by lowering brightness. The new option will especially help the visually impaired. In addition, the dark theme helps save smartphone battery usage.

Almost 1,000 engineers have joined BBVA in the first half of 2022. A figure that the financial institution expects to double by the end of this year. These are technology profiles that are embedded throughout the different countries where the bank has a presence, 400 of them in Spain.

BBVA has launched a new global software division that brings together more than 16,000 developers across the Group. This new division will speed up delivery of digital solutions and make them more easily scalable across the countries where the bank operates.