Garanti BBVA is launching a product to finance the installation of solar energy systems on rooftops for self-consumption.

45 minutes by motorcycle, half an hour by boat and 15 minutes on foot. That is how Sergio Pacheco and Victor Madera, loan officers of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation in Colombia, manage to bring financial services where no one else does. This journey is just one example among the numerous cases that can be found in the countries where the Foundation works. These are the lengths to which they go to reach those who live outside the financial system, which is another barrier to their progress. In 2020, BBVAMF has banked nearly 300,000 people in Colombia and Peru, and its two institutions combined have reached more than 2.1 million clients.

Garanti BBVA launches ‘Garanti Portföy Temiz Enerji Karma Fon’, an innovative fund that invests in capital market instruments tied to Turkish and international companies in the sector of clean, renewable and alternative energy technologies.

BBVA USA received a perfect score of 100 on the 2021 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), the nation’s premier benchmarking survey and report on corporate policies and practices related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) workplace equality, administered by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation.  The bank joins the ranks of over 767 major U.S. businesses that also earned top marks this year.

GoBanking Rates released its annual Best Banks of 2021 lists this month, naming BBVA USA in three categories: Best Money Market Accounts, Best Regional Banks and Top 100 Banks. 

How do you know if a banking product is sustainable and contributes to the protection of the environment? In 2020, 26 banks including BBVA, tested how the European Union's taxonomy on sustainable activities could be applied to core banking products. Common criteria for determining which products are sustainable could allow banks to drive sustainable financing for the entire economy.

BBVA commits to reporting ESG metrics, as part of the Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism initiative, adopted by 61 member companies of the Davos World Economic Forum and a group of top executives who are part of its International Business Council (IBC).

BBVA, which recently launched its line of business ‘Quantitative Investment Strategies’ (QIS) for institutional investors, has augmented its first QIS index family specialized in sustainability, with the incorporation of two pioneering climate indexes of its own creation: ‘Solactive BBVA Climate Action PAB Europe’ and  ‘Solactive BBVA Climate Action CTB Europe’.

Under the agreement with EBRD, Garanti BBVA will prioritize its investments with high sustainability performance for those who want to improve their performance while financing the investment projects.

BBVA, as sole sustainability coordinator, advised Publiacqua, one of the major water management companies in Italy, on how to link its core bank financing to environmental targets. The transaction consisted of converting an existing loan of EUR 140Mn into a sustainability-linked loan with two pure water management KPIs. With this financing, Publiacqua becomes the first water utility company in Italy to have sustainability features in their financing instruments.