On May 25, 2020, the General Data Protection Regulation celebrated its second year of entry into application. As envisaged in the standard itself, the European Commission performed an assessment on its application and functioning over this period of time, taking into account the feedback provided by associations, companies, consumers and EU institutions. The commission has finally released the corresponding findings, which concludes that, on top of having a very positive impact, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that the Regulation is prepared for the new digital age

This partnership deal will let BBVA employees take an official master’s degree in Big Data, gain recognition as data scientists or achieve an industrial doctorate in data science. In addition, the agreement will enable students at Universidad de Navarra to carry out research alongside BBVA and even join the bank later on.

Beyond hastening the adoption of specific technologies – such as telemedicine or robotics – one of the brightest outcomes of the scenario brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has been the unprecedented collaborative spirit that has emerged, which could unleash deeper changes in technological development in the coming years. The challenges posed by the coronavirus aftermath may lead to increasing levels of data sharing and faster deployment of solutions to preserve privacy, which could help lay the foundation for new digital infrastructures.

Ricardo Forcano, the Global Head of Engineering and Organization at BBVA, participated in a digital meeting organized by the Association for Managerial Progress (APD) entitled ‘Innovation and culture for organizational growth’.  During the event, the director explained how the current situation can serve as an impetus to redesign work methods in organizations. He also explained that BBVA is using collective intelligence and data to face the current crisis.

A recent article by MIT Sloan Management Review highlighted the innovations in data wrapping that companies like BBVA and PepsiCo are pushing into the markets.

Joaquín Dopazo is leading a project that uses a machine learning algorithm to identify proteins involved in the illness and cross match this information with a database of drugs used to treat other conditions. “We checked if some of the proteins detected are therapeutic targets of other medications approved for other uses, and we concluded that these treatments could act on the mechanisms that COVID-19 uses to cause harm,” says the researcher, who in 2018 won a BBVA Foundation team grant in the Big Data category.

A BBVA Research study leverages big data technology to monitor worldwide media treatment of COVID-19. Analyzing more than 80,000 online news publications in more than 100 languages, the study concludes that both the extent of news coverage and its sentiment provides valuable information about the pandemic’s development and the degree to which it impacts the economy and politics. Furthermore, a correlation between increased number of infections and ‘media stress’ has been observed.

Artificial intelligence is contributing to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects directly related to pharmacology, medical and hospital care, or mobility analysis to reduce contagion have found a crucial ally in data science to make progress and deliver results.

BBVA Research has used big data technologies to examine the impact of COVID-19 on Spanish consumption. The conclusions reflect a 49 percent average decline in consumer spending. The analysis has led to a collaboration between researchers at BBVA Research, the University of Cambridge, the Imperial College of London, and the University of Edinburgh. The use of anonymous transactional data to gain a real-time reflection of reactions to the crisis and economic policies was justified for decision-making purposes.

Unequivocally identifying people online and respecting their privacy remain major challenges for companies and a growing cause of concern for users. Covault is committed to a model whereby banks take on the role of the verifiers of users’ data, which is in keeping with the trend within the ecosystem.

The European Research Council has presented one of its most prestigious research grants to  Stephen Hansen, an Associate Professor of Economics and researcher at the Imperial College of London, and previously at the University of Oxford. With this grant, Hansen will start a research project on big data together with BBVA Research.

Is it possible to take advantage of big data without it affecting the privacy of users? The answer may reside in “Privacy-enhancing technologies”, or PETs, a set of technologies that use different computational and mathematical approaches with the same purpose: extracting data value in order to unleash its full commercial, scientific and social potential, without jeopardizing the privacy and security of this information.

Did you know? There are more than 1,300 different roles within BBVA—and they all play a critical role in creating opportunities for our customers. Over the coming months, we’ll be profiling some team members and sharing how they’re Working for Our Customers.

Over the next decade the labor market around Big Data will be shaped by artificial intelligence and automation. Experts predict that in the future there will be new data-related jobs, such as algorithm trainers and maintainers. These are new job positions that will emerge as information management becomes increasingly complex and valuable.

The role technology plays in people’s lives –both personal and business– is continually growing. As a bank, BBVA committed to transforming itself digitally long before the start of the last decade, understanding that technology was going to have a huge impact on how the industry operates. In this article, BBVA experts in various fields give their view on the changes that 2020 will see in the technological landscape.

One of the biggest challenges in advanced analytics is developing mechanisms to determine how reliable the decisions made by algorithms are. Now, research by BBVA’s Artificial Intelligence Factory is proposing a new method to make machine learning models capable of expressing the uncertainty in their predictions in a clearer manner. It’s an exploratory approach to make artificial intelligence more transparent, measure the reliability of its predictions and  fine tune the accuracy of its results.

Automatic learning is a prerequisite for intelligent systems. It enables data-driven predictions and creates new business opportunities. Banking in general, and BBVA in particular, is already taking advantage of this technology in order to improve products and services for its customers.

With the advent of big data, banks like BBVA are better able to harness the power of information to improve customer experience and provide advice, products and services – all personalized to your unique situation.

By using AI to better understand customers financial lives, and to then offer them better advice and specific products, BBVA has been able to significantly increase digital sales.

Machines’ current ability to learn is present in many aspects of everyday life. Machine learning is behind the recommendations for movies we receive on digital platforms, virtual assistants’ ability to recognize speech, or self-driving cars’ ability to see the road. But its origin as a branch of artificial intelligence dates began several decades ago. Why is this technology so important now, and what makes it so revolutionary?

Will connected cars need their own bank account? The BBVA New Digital Businesses (NDB) unit is working to anticipate the opportunities and challenges that will arise in the financial industry when the Internet of Things (IoT) makes it possible to manage transactions directly among objects, people and organizations.

As BBVA Chairman Carlos Torres Vila told an audience in Las Vegas last week, the connection between data and financial services is a long one.

BBVA’s Group executive chairman participated in the Money 20/20 conference on financial technologies in Las Vegas, Nevada (U.S.), one of the most  important global events that brings together leading actors from the fintech and financial services industries. There he reiterated the need for “global, cross sector regulation” that fosters data exchange among different companies. “Customers must be the real winners,” insisted Torres Vila, stressing the idea that the free flow of data would facilitate the development of new services that will benefit citizens, society and the planet.

Representatives of three leading organizations – Google, Telefónica and BBVA – spoke during the Open Summit event about the different applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the business world and how to extract tangible value from data for people and for society as a whole, at a scale and in a structured way.

Artificial intelligence and big data, are proven contributors of innovation to the financial system. The digital explosion and technological advances have caused a revolution in society and in the corporate organization. As explained by Jorge Sicilia, Chief Economist of BBVA Group and director of BBVA Research, the financial sector is no stranger to these changes and the next wave of innovation is going to be based on artificial intelligence.

This week, Carlos Torres Vila attended the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington. BBVA’s Group executive chairman participated in a panel discussion on banking in the digital age, where he stated that: “Technology is a very powerful lever for financial inclusion. It allows us to reach people we never could before.”

PSD2 is a European regulation for electronic payment services. It seeks to make payments more secure in Europe, boost innovation and help banking services adapt to new technologies. PSD2 is evidence of the increasing importance Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are acquiring in different financial sectors.

The company, which develops solutions that allow users to manage their data directly with advertisers and brands, has closed the first round of funding led by the bank, with participation from La Sexta Opción.

BBVA Chairman Carlos Torres Vila has told the biggest start-up conference in Spain that authorities around the world need to take action to unlock the true potential of data.

Big data is having a huge impact on the business world, and consequently it is becoming an integral part of corporate DNA. Aware of the benefits derived from this technology, businesses have resolved to recruit professionals who can manage and analyze vast quantities of data. The goal is to offer more personalized solutions to customers.

Every second an enormous amount of data from around the globe is amassed. Companies need professionals with expertise in processing and converting this data into knowledge that will feed their decision-making and define their business strategies.

Is it possible to show that something is true without revealing the data that proves it? This is what ‘Zero Knowledge Proof’ technology proposes, a technique which employs cryptographic algorithms so that various parties can verify the veracity of an item of information without sharing the data that compose it.

We recently caught up with Open Platform’s CEO, Abhishek Gupta, to discuss the benefits of open banking, Banking-as-a-Service, and why they have the power to transform the delivery of services across a wide range of industries in the US. Following are the highlights from our conversation with him.

Ricardo Martin Manjón was named as BBVA Global Head of Data in April this year, having previously been the bank’s Global Head of Data Strategy and Data Science Innovation. His role sees him lead the bank’s development, deployment and future thinking around how BBVA drives forward its use of data throughout the Group, so it can achieve its strategic objective of bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.

In this interview Martin Manjón outlines why BBVA has a strategic focus on data, how that manifests itself across the entire group, what it will mean for customers in the future and the critical importance scale plays in data management.

When it comes to 21st century banking, there is no shortage of terms bandied about that those in the industry are expected to know. Among the more obtuse are those related to banking’s next frontier, open banking.

Gonzalo Rodriguez Rodriguez is the global head of Customer Solutions at BBVA – the business unit charged with building the future of consumer financial services for the bank. In this interview, Gonzalo outlines where he sees the future of banking heading, and how far along that path BBVA currently is.

Many organizations now process huge amounts of data using artificial intelligence. So it is crucial to find ways to prevent unfair biases. New research by BBVA and the Universidad de Barcelona (UB) tries to achieve this with a model that automatically sorts more than 600 superheroes as “good” or “evil” while disregarding traits like gender or race.

Consumers’ sensitive data is increasingly at risk as more businesses ask for personal information as a way to verify digital identity online. But what if there were a way to do that without the risk of compromising that information? Covault is leading a revolution to do just that.

In the business world, the CISO or Chief Information Security Officer is the person responsible for ensuring and upgrading information security within the organization. At home, we can apply many of the basic principles that are foundation of the CISO role to protect and preserve our family’s private information. No matter how daunting the task may seem at first, it is really not that hard to achieve this goal without being an expert on the subject.

AI Factory is the global development center where BBVA builds the artificial intelligence capabilities that power both its customer solutions – for both the retail and corporate segments – and the Group’s streamlined internal processes. The new structure brings together, under the same roof, a cross-disciplinary team consisting of data scientists, teams from the Engineering area, and representatives from other business areas.

Data may have been the key buzzword at the Money 2020 Europe event in Amsterdam last week, but it was its constituent parts that were really vying for attention.

Money 2020 Europe is the biggest conference on the continent focused on the future of banking, money and financial services. Over the course of three days in Amsterdam, around 10,000 business leaders, entrepreneurs, start-ups, press and potential customers will be sharing and debating the trends likely to shape the future of the sector.

In an Op-Ed article published in the Financial Times, BBVA Group’s executive chairman Carlos Torres Vila has called on the next European Commission, which will take office in November 2019, to prioritise cross-sector data sharing regulations to fuel the fast growing digital economy.

Global strategic agreement with NetApp enables optimization of data management and enhancement of cloud operations to continue supporting digital transformation.

Sixty candidates worked non-stop to develop an analytical model and come up with a business solution based on datasets provided by BBVA. The competition, hosted last week at Ciudad BBVA, was the last phase of a selection process aimed at recruiting new members to enroll in the ‘Young Data Professionals’ program, a BBVA initiative aimed at developing young advanced analytics talent.

BBVA Executive Chairman Carlos Torres Vila today unveiled the book ‘Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade’ in Madrid. The book is the eleventh in a collection sponsored by OpenMind, the non-profit knowledge community created by BBVA. More than 20 authors contributed to this year’s edition, which fosters a broad based discussion about the new philosophical and ethical foundations that need to be established in order to sustain an economy, a society, a culture – and the corresponding regulation – as they adapt to the new scientific and technological contexts.

There is no doubt that big data is transforming the financial industry, helping it overcome the challenges of today’s society. Nonetheless, given the fact that one of its fundamental objectives is to obtain data — albeit to improve customer satisfaction —  it still causes some people to have misgivings because it is perceived as an intrusion of their privacy.