In an interview published in the latest edition of Compromiso RSE, Antoni Ballabriga, Global Director of Responsible Business at BBVA and Co-Chair of the Global Steering Committee for the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), stressed that: “The financial sector’s sustainable partnership with the United Nations is more active than ever.” An initiative he feels promotes a financial industry that has a positive impact,  serving people and the planet. “It’s something that it hopes to achieve by inspiring, informing and enabling financial institutions to improve people’s quality of life without compromising that of future generations,” he explains.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has presented its report on private development financing. The study assessed more than 30 of the largest foundations in the OECD member countries and reveals that the BBVA Microfinance Foundation disbursed $1.2 billion in 2018. This represents 83 percent of the total of this kind of financing in Latin America, BBVAMF's sole operating region. BBVAMF thus places first in the region and second globally, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

BBVA USA highlighted the work its employees do to share knowledge and empower community members through financial education in its recent submission to the Boston College Corporate Citizenship Film Festival.

BBVA is celebrating the World Day for Reducing CO2 Emissions by reaffirming its environmental policy to develop a more sustainable economy. BBVA has committed to be neutral in terms of CO2 emissions in 2020. As of January 1st, it has assigned an internal price for its emissions, thus incorporating this factor into decision-making processes, as BBVA Group Executive Chairman Carlos Torres Vila recently announced. This measure is part of BBVA’s broader effort to align its activity with the Paris Agreement and cut its direct and indirect emissions. BBVA will light its Madrid headquarters building in blue in commemoration of this international day.

BBVA’s Group executive chairman participated in a debate organized by CNBC at Davos to discuss what financial institutions can do to mobilize resources for a more sustainable development. Carlos Torres Vila pointed to the bank’s commitment - not only to mobilize resources, but to accompany its clients in this change. “Advising our clients in their environmental transition is an integral part of BBVA’s strategy,” he said.

Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP),  the world’s main platform for environmental information, has included BBVA in its “category A-”, consisting of leading companies in the fight against climate change. The bank has improved its rating in the past three years and is now in the top category: Leadership (A).

A total of six community organizations in the Bryan-College Station area were awarded a sum of $22,500 in grants from the BBVA USA Foundation during a breakfast presentation on Thursday.

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, warns that his asset management company (the world's largest) will take action against investee companies that do not consider sustainability. "We will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress," he warns in his annual letter to the CEOs of the world's leading companies.

Under the scope of agreements Garanti BBVA has signed with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Development Bank of Austria (OeEB), and Green for Growth Fund (GGF), the bank will allocate $133 million to support energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, small and medium-size businesses, and women entrepreneurs across 22 Turkish provinces.