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.

The award underscores the role that the Group is playing, spearheading the digital transformation process of the region’s financial sector by rolling out, on an ongoing basis, innovative products and services that seek to bring the age of opportunity to everyone. The publication also recognized BBVA as the best digital bank in Spain in the Corporate/Institutional category.

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.

Although ransomware attacks (holding a victim’s data ransom) and phishing have recently become more and more frequent, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks continue to top of the lists of those techniques most used by cybercriminals.

BBVA has today unveiled the set of national finalists in the eleventh edition of BBVA Open Talent – the world’s biggest fintech competition.

Cybercriminals are using job search tools like LinkedIn to access the personal data of thousands of users. This is why it is so important to know how to identify and protect yourself against this threat.

BBVA announced strong results last week when it published its 2Q 2019 report – much of which was underpinned by continuous strong performance in its digital transformation.

Garanti BBVA’s data center, formerly located in Istanbul’s Güneşli district, has moved to an Uptime Institute Tier IV certified building in Pendik, also in Istanbul.

Behavioral economics, the study of human behavior regarding decision making, is the latest field of study BBVA is using to improve customer experience and simplify banking for its customers.

Atom bank, the UK’s first bank built exclusively for mobile and the UK’s most trusted bank on Trustpilot, has raised £50m in a fundraising round with participation from BBVA, Toscafund, Woodford Patient Capital Trust and funds advised by Perscitus LLP.

For more than 20 years Garanti BBVA has been investing in technology in order to ensure a personalized and simplified digital experience in every new product or service it offers its customers and clients. In collaboration with Google, the bank recently launched a ‘Universal App Campaign,’ aiming to increase the number of interactions in the Garanti BBVA Mobile app and to encourage customers to use the bank’s digital channels for their banking transactions.

Decision making can be psychologically, emotionally and sometimes even physically exhausting. That’s why all of us have created mental shortcuts, biases, and preferences that help us make decisions. While this can save us time and fatigue, it doesn’t always help us make the best decisions.

Some organizations foment innovation in the contexts that dictate the present. But innovation is intimately tied to the future and variations of the future. Thus, inspiring creativity is also offering ideas about what is possible and forthcoming. Perhaps this is the key to true realism.

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.

We humans have a history of finding faster, simpler, more efficient ways of doing things. Over time, we’ve sped up every process from building a car to ordering a pizza online.  So it’s really no surprise that we’ve also established thought processes to help us wade through all the information we encounter and make decisions more quickly.

Garanti BBVA’s Mobile app is a good example of how the bank is making its customers’ lives easier. All these efforts contribute to the bank’s customer-centric focus by ensuring that its tailor-made services are available – any time and any place – to both its individual and corporate customers.

Artificial intelligence systems that are capable of reasoning, creating art or even learning to teach other machines. These are a few examples of what could occur in the future with advances in deep learning. Three experts in the AI field shared their vision, concerns and hopes regarding the development of this technology during the launch of BBVA AI Factory.

Antonio Herráiz is a firm believer in innovation focused on results, especially if it generates a positive impact for people. Thanks to him, more than 7,000 of the Group’s employees across the globe have attended BBVA’s Process Academy.

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.

BBVA and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have signed a collaboration agreement to jointly explore the applications of quantum technologies in the financial sector.

If Cicero or Quintilianus had known about TED Talks, they probably would have included them in their repertoire of rhetorical devices. Quite possible because, just like the Romans recommended, Ted Talk orators persuade with eloquence.

Earlier this month, BBVA hosted the third edition of Open Summit – this time in Mexico, bringing together business leaders and innovators from across LATAM.

BBVA will today launch a new program designed to foster even greater success among the fintech start-up ecosystem it engages with.

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.

Any company can fall victim to this kind of crime in which criminals trick an employee authorized to give bank payment orders into performing a transaction for them. Financial institutions like BBVA never request sensitive information, such as passwords or personal data, by email or outside of the secure environment on Net Cash and BBVA.es. For organizations, the key to preventing this kind of fraud is to reinforce control systems and  exercise great caution.

BBVA USA launched its real time ARP and PositivePay products last year in a milestone that was both ground-breaking and game-changing.

BBVA and Dufry have launched the first WeChat Pay facilities in Spain, in the travel retail operator’s World Duty Free stores at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas airport, in a dedicated bid to make Chinese tourists feel more welcome while on tour.

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.

After two years of fast growth, entrepreneurial banking specialist Azlo sets its sights on building a network-affect business community.

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.

BBVA’s venture capital business Propel Venture Partners has led the funding round into one of the three finalists of the bank’s Open Talent competition, just a year after the business scooped a top award.

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.

At the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) 2019 Global Conference, Garanti BBVA presented their 2018 annual consolidated report, which emphasized how important empathy is to the bank’s corporate culture and how this influences their approach to customers,clients and employees. Sinem Ozonur, BBVA Head of Consolidated Reporting at Garanti BBVA, was the first representative from a Turkish company to take the stage and address some of the more note-worthy topics.

A new strategy and narrower focus will help BBVA Open Innovation build on its 2018 successes.