An exceptional user experience and value added features are the keys to differentiating a banking application from its competition. These are the elements that held the most sway when, for the second consecutive year, the consulting firm Forrester chose BBVA’s app as the best banking app in the world and gave the Garanti BBVA app in Turkey the best in user experience.

At an event organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, BBVA’s Group executive chairman presented Openmind’s new book, ‘Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade‘. Carlos Torres Vila and two contributing authors, Joanna Bryson and Sandy Pentland, discussed the implications of big data and artificial intelligence in the current technological context and its role in the so-called fourth industrial revolution.

In recent months, BBVA Next Technologies has devoted some effort into researching tools and techniques for interpreting machine learning models. These techniques are very useful to understand the predictions of a model (or make others understand them), to extract business insights from a model that has managed to capture the underlying patterns of customers interest, and to debug models in order to ensure they make the right decisions for the right reasons.

In this article we will explain how we have applied these techniques to avoid deploying flawed models into production that seemed totally correct a priori according to standard validation methods.

The branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on teaching machines how to see is becoming increasingly sophisticated. It is already better than humans at telling one person from another. At BBVA’s headquarters, this technology is already being used to allow users to pay for their meals at Ciudad BBVA’s restaurants. But, how does it work?

The ways in which businesses use data to deliver on their strategies is almost as varied as the sources of data themselves. This was one of the key messages from last week’s Domopalooza event held in Salt Lake City in Utah.

When it comes to designing customer interaction with online services – whether from a GPS navigator or through a mobile banking app – it is more and more common to design automated features that anticipate customer issues.

Money is often cited as being one of the biggest causes of stress in people’s lives. So imagine a ‘Self-driving’ bank account that took away some of that stress by watching your finances 24/7 and acting on your behalf to make your money work harder for you. Well it’s a future that’s very close to becoming a reality with latest advances in Artificial Intelligence now able to do more for you than ever before.

In its most recent issue, The Fintech Magazine examines some of BBVA’s most recent technology advances, such as payments powered by facial recognition and the use of artificial intelligence in its mobile banking application.  The magazine also outlines the core of the bank’s digital strategy and describes how BBVA is taking steps to fulfill its vision of automated banking in the future.

Every parent has been in this position: the baby cries and cries, and we don’t know why. Is it hungry? Is it tired? Ana Laguna, data scientist at BBVA Data & Analytics, asked herself the same questions when her first child was born. Ana looked for an app that would help her understand why her baby was crying.  But she didn’t have any luck. Then she thought she could translate her baby’s crying and understand what it needed any time by using the artificial intelligence techniques that she uses everyday at work.

BBVA and OpenMind, in collaboration with Professor Rafael Yuste, held a conference in Brussels to discuss the potential legal implications stemming from the rapid development of Neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence. Under the title “Do we need new human rights?” scientists, politicians and regulatory authorities described the current situation and pointed to problems that need to be addressed, offering possible solutions to an issue that is not without controversy.

Propel Venture Partners, BBVA’s San Francisco based venture capital investment vehicle, has co-led the latest funding round into a business seeking to link up psychology and machine learning.

In an article, Forbes praises BBVA’s digital strategy and technological deployment, as well as the AI-powered apps that the bank is already using to deliver better solutions to its customers.

Artificial Intelligence and online messaging platforms are joining forces to help users easily build their savings with chatbots. Millennials are accustomed to using these kind of channels to address personal admin chores, so it is logical that they tend to be the target market for tools like Charlie, a chatbot that is part of Propel Venture Partners’ investment portfolio.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a neurologic condition that causes people suffering from it to be dominated by anxiety and develop unwanted thoughts that they cannot get rid of. Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III are applying artificial intelligence techniques to detect which brain areas are affected by this disorder. Emilio Parrado, a data scientist at BBVA was one of the researchers that took part in the project and explains how machine learning can bring huge improvements to any activity, including finance.

According to a report by the independent research firm Forrester, 2019 will be the year that digital transformation aspirations translate into “pragmatic” actions.

Putting a machine at the wheel is an old automotive dream. Now self-driving cars are a closer goal, but it all began with small steps starting in the middle of the twentieth century.

More and more initiatives allow SMEs to use artificial intelligence without the need for programmers. Giants like Baidu and Google, as well as smaller companies like Lobe, are presenting their products.

BBVA customers can now use an app that predicts their future income and expenses (Bconomy). Now, BBVA has developed —together with Google Cloud— an artificial intelligence model that would allow them to improve the accuracy of predictions. This model is explained in a white paper that also offers users recommendations on ways to protect the privacy of their data.

BBVA Compass Head of New Business Development Pepe Olalla says in 2019 early stage technologies will mature – for example more use cases for blockchain – but it’s AI-related technology that will take center stage.

Space Apps Challenge is an annual global contest where scientists and innovators from across the world compete to solve challenges facing the aerospace industry proposed by NASA. In 2016, I was one of the scientists that won this prize thanks to an algorithm capable of detecting and classifying Near Earth Objects, or NEOs. Today, I work as a data scientist at BBVA, where I develop fraud detection models. This is my story.

BBVA-backed investment fund to support growth of advisory service Charlie, aimed at less financially astute U.S. consumers.

Companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify and Netflix use algorithms to try to offer their users personalized recommendations. Two Spanish researchers found that even in these personalized suggestions, the views of the majority carry a heavy weight.

The arrival of new blockchain platforms, advances in cloud computing and the consolidation of new machine-human interactions, are among the hottest trends according BBVA Next Technologies ‘Tech Radar 2018‘, a report that shines the spotlight on some the most relevant tools and practices in 2018, as well as those that will mark the next years in fields such as big data and artificial intelligence.

Driverless cars capable of behaving like bird flocks, software capable of playing sheets of music composed during the Renaissance, algorithms capable of analyzing emotions expressed by social media users and tools for boosting people’s learning abilities… These are just some areas on which the winners of this year’s edition of the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) – BBVA Foundation Research Awards have focused their work.

It might seem like a strange question to be asking, but given the multiple elements that drive the success of a bank, and given also that increasingly location is a key determining factor in how you deliver great customer experience, its an important topic.

At BBVA Open Summit, Ricardo Forcano, BBVA’s Global Head of Talent and Culture; and Rob Brown, Global CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at BBVA, chatted with the representatives of two startups that are working to leverage blockchain and AI technologies to enable new decentralized ways of working.

Devices with combined cloud technology and neural networks integrated into their hardware – to reduce potential stability, privacy, and latency issues – are now a reality.

The issue is no longer about using data, but doing it in a responsible manner that also has a positive impact on users’ lives.  This was one of the most relevant topics discussed during the second day of BBVA Open Summit, where Derek White, Global Head of Client Solutions at BBVA, stressed that user confidence is the key to success in this new digital playing field.

With investments on artificial intelligence expected to reach €10 billion by 2020, it is evident that the financial sector is very optimistic about these technologies. However, the level of uncertainty surrounding AI remains almost too high to justify this degree of enthusiasm. In a recently published paper, the World Economic Forum warns about how overhyped misconceptions of what AI really is and what it can deliver may undermine the potential benefits derived from the use of artificial intelligence in finance. In contrast with this vision, other experts concur that AI contributes more to prevent and mitigate risks than to generate them.

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said to participants in the BBVA Open Summit in Madrid that “data will define the future of the world.” Addressing an audience of hundreds of entrepreneurs, BBVA chairman added that for BBVA, data belongs to the customer.

The Valencian company Emotion Research Lab has developed a system that studies human behavior through facial analysis.

According to Gartner, 38% of companies around the world are expected to use ‘conversational bots’ for customer service and managing corporate applications by employees.

BBVA Compass is far from experiencing an AI takeover of the sort Wikipedia describes, but teams from around the bank, including Mortgage, Finance and Compliance, have discovered the power and efficiency of automation.

In this series of of interviews, BBVA talks with some of those at the cutting edge of designing the future of financial services. The series is about getting under the skin of where, how and why technology will be the biggest game-changer when it comes to how people and businesses bank in the future.

New technologies have transformed the financial sector based on integrating systems that learn for themselves while processing millions of pieces of data. BBVA has pioneered the use of automated systems such as bots to enhance customer experience.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently released research aimed at demonstrating the importance of digital transformation in corporate banking. In the research, BCG underscored the notion that for lasting and meaningful digital transformation, banks need to develop a clear vision for the future of banking, formulate a comprehensive strategy of how they will evolve alongside it, and plan their initiatives accordingly.

BBVA Bancomer is the first bank in Mexico to use artificial intelligence integrated with WhatsApp’s technology. Its virtual assistant facilitates the bank’s communication with both customers and non-customer users, answering questions about branch location, how to open an account, and suggestions on how to use the bank’s digital services.

With the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications across industries, there has been understandable confusion around associated terms, including Robotic Process Automation, Intelligent Automation and even AI itself.

Computer programs that automate processes are already common in banks. They cut costs, improve efficiency, but what is more important is that when combined with artificial intelligence, they open the door to greater advances.

From industry conferences to the headlines of the trades and in boardrooms around the world, the term “Artificial Intelligence” – or AI – is all the rage in financial services.

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are among the most discussed subjects of our age.  Terms such as machine learning and deep learning are gradually becoming part of our daily lives. Increasingly, a wide array of economic sectors, including banking, is taking advantage of the potential offered by these exponential technologies to improve customer experience  and offer a more relevant catalogue of products and services.

The future of the financial sector lies in its seamless integration into all sorts of devices. Biometrics, APIs and chatbots… there is mounting evidence that we might be in the early stages of the new era of  everywhere banking.

Gesturing to the mint colored typewriter on the table, BBVA US Director of Risk Technology and Productivity Amory Booher said, “Technology has a lifecycle with a start and end date. For instance, the computer changed how we interacted with typewriters. Similarly, artificial intelligence and cognitive capabilities are changing how we interact with computers. We don’t know if these technological advancements will be as significant as going from the typewriter to the computer, but it’s incumbent on us to understand how these technologies are being applied so we can use them to make our lives better.”

Thanks to machine learning, chatbots are already becoming much more than a mere “always-on” tool used for interacting with the bank.

Artificial Intelligence’s greatest advances have yet to come, but the combination of big data with machine learning algorithms has already yielded benefits to the financial world daily operations.

With the creation of this engineering company, home to 1,200 technology experts, BBVA seeks to expedite its technological transformation.

“Hi, how can I help?” They are only five simple words, but there was nothing simple about what followed when Google presented Google Duplex at its recent I/O conference recently. Google Duplex is an ‘intelligent’ AI-led voice assistant tool that is capable of executing simple voice calls, such as making restaurant reservations or hairdresser’s appointments. It sounded so realistic and human that the person on the other end of the line in each demo was seemingly unaware that they were speaking to a machine.

Fintech expert Chris Skinner shared the stage with Carlos Kuchkovsky, CTO New Digital Businesses at BBVA, at Desafío Ingenia, where they debated the arrival of technologies such as artificial intelligence, the importance of data and new entrants in the financial services market.

Amid the apparent decline of physical shops, new technologies are offering new opportunities to future consumers who will continue to visit stores, but with the help of artificial intelligence on their smartphones.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. In recent years it has opened the way to different areas of our lives, reaching what were previously unknown territories. This is not a single technology, but rather a set of construction blocks that act as catalysts for major advances, which is why BBVA is committed to an innovative approach based on data science and artificial intelligence to boost its capital markets business.