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.

Carlos Torres Vila studied at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which is where he gave his first interview since becoming BBVA’s Executive Chairman. He was in Boston to present OpenMind’s new book, ‘Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade’ and sat down with the Spanish newspaper, ‘El Mundo,’ to discuss the explosion of technology in the banking industry. He believes data is fundamental: “It is crucial that the data revolution is universal. The most vulnerable in society cannot be left behind.”

In general, businesses use the customer data they access for internal purposes, creating value-added services. Yet, there is greater potential for society as a whole beyond corporate “closed doors.” Public-private sector collaboration using data sources for external initiatives can produce significant benefits. For example, a door could be open that would facilitate the use of data to help fulfill the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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 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.

Training employees in analytical techniques has become a top priority for companies seeking to make the most out of their data.

BBVA’s Global Head of Client Solutions, Derek White, told a conference in the Spanish capital Madrid this morning that it was crucial the customers win ‘The Game of Data’.

The European Commission (EC) is convening institutions, businesses, and regulators today and tomorrow in BBVA’s headquarters in Madrid with the aim of promoting security and privacy measures that will stimulate greater use of cloud services and the free flow of data in Europe’s digital single market (DSM). BBVA is hosting the event and is an active member of the EC working group, which is seeking to standardize security certification for cloud providers and establish a code of conduct that will facilitate data portability and the ability to switch providers.

BBVA has been internationally recognized in the third annual Digital Talent Awards, presented by Accenture and the daily business newspaper El Economista, in collaboration with Spain’s Human Resources group. The bank has earned the award because of its adaptability in the digital age, as demonstrated by its cultural change, leadership style, and most importantly its transition to an agile approach to work.

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.

Social networks and the conversation created by the media on the internet provide a reliable source of information to gauge society’s feelings or perceptions on certain topics. In a new report, BBVA Research applies big data and artificial intelligence techniques to analyze the reach, the topics, the key players and the perception of the fintech phenomenon based on the information published on Twitter and traditional media.

BBVA created the Global Head of Data position in March 2017 as part of its strategy to make decisions based on data. David Puente took on this new role, leading one of the most disruptive and essential projects in the bank’s transformation.

The trends described below will be the major disruptors that continue to shape the future of the new year in the age of digital transformation.

If December is the month with the highest sales for traditional shopping, for the last two years November has become the star of Internet shopping. The recent phenomenon of Black Friday brings forward by one month the arrival of Christmas to online shopping, according to a study by BBVA Data & Analytics and BBVA Research.

In a world flush with acronyms – hello, banking! – “API” might seem like the latest notable term. But the truth is, APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, have been on the scene for many years, and was made popular in the year 2000 when SalesForce officially launched its web-based sales force automation.

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.

How will banks be impacted by big tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.) entering the financial services industry? Can regulation promote a level playing field? These are some of the questions raised at the “Big Tech Banking” event organized by CUNEF (University of Financial Studies) and the Spanish Banking Association (AEB). BBVA joined financial experts and regulators participating in the event, where a common thought prevailed: data will play a key role in the battle between banks and Big Tech.

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.

Flora Egea is BBVA’s Data Protection Officer (DPO). She has a critical assignment in her hands: to ensure that BBVA complies with Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which has revolutionized the way companies handle personal data. On the six month anniversary of its implementation, she believes the legislation has raised awareness among the general public about the need to protect their personal data, but there is still work to be done. In her opinion, GDPR is a positive step and positions Europe as a world leader given its unique treatment of data as a fundamental right.

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.

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.

The CEO and future chairman of BBVA, Carlos Torres Vila, stressed this morning that “privacy should never be the price to pay for a service.” At the IX Financial Meeting organized by KPMG and Spain’s daily business journal Expansión he explained that new European regulations for the protection and use of data (GDPR and PSD2) are a step in the right direction, although he called for a level playing field between banks and other sectors.