Artificial intelligence will bring about a faster and more profound transformation than the digital revolution, drastically altering customer relations, value propositions and the way organizations operate. This was the message BBVA CEO Onur Genç delivered in his presentation at the fintech conference Money2020, where he stressed that differentiation in this new era will hinge on how capable organizations are of transforming and scaling AI across their operations, an area where BBVA is already taking decisive steps.  In addition, he underscored that the bank has established a very clear roadmap to build a more personalized, accessible and proactive banking experience for its clients.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday, BBVA’s Global Head of Finance, Luisa Gómez Bravo, noted that AI will be one of the key forces shaping the future of banking and will drive a transformation that is greater, faster, and more disruptive than digitalization, benefiting clients in particular: “We believe AI can become a powerful engine for innovation and value creation for clients and, ultimately, generate significantly greater value for our shareholders.”

The AI Transformation area, which sits at the top level of the organization and will be led by Antonio Bravo combines the current Data area with critical technological capabilities to industrialize the creation, deployment and management of artificial intelligence (AI) agents across the organization. This evolution will accelerate the bank’s transformation and enable smarter, more proactive and highly personalized financial services for its customers.

BBVA and the University of Navarra have completed the first two industrial doctorates in data science under their joint program. This pioneering initiative enables working professionals to carry out advanced academic research into real challenges facing the financial sector. Both theses propose ways of developing AI models that can identify the causes behind financial decisions, not just the correlations.

Photo caption (from left to right): Paul G. Tobin, Global Head of Talent and Culture at BBVA; Paloma Grau, Vice President for Research and Sustainability at the University of Navarra; the newly awarded PhDs Paloma Marín and Jesús Renero; and Jesús López Fidalgo, Director of DATAI. / Source: University of Navarra

BBVA has announced its participation as a founding partner in the OpenAI Deployment Company, the new company launched by OpenAI, together with 18 leading investment firms, consultancies and system integrators. With a total investment of more than $4 billion, the OpenAI Deployment Company will provide services to facilitate the deployment of artificial intelligence across enterprise organizations.

Garanti BBVA’s AI journey, launched in 2016, has evolved into Ugi, which today handles more than 6.4 million monthly interactions on average, has 1.6 million active users, and supports more than 300 end-to-end banking transactions. With the integration of generative AI, Ugi can now understand 90% of user requests. Over the past year, nearly 50% of mobile banking customers interacted with Ugi at least once, while the system delivered proactive solutions through 780,000 instant notifications per month.

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist and philosopher specialising in the brain hemispheres and their influence on the human body, well-being, and social and cultural change.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already one of the main drivers of transformation in the financial sector and BBVA has been looking closely at how people incorporate it into their work. Training, new internal roles that promote its uptake, and a culture that encourages experimentation are some of the pillars of a strategy aimed at transforming how work is done across the organization.

BBVA’s Blue assistant, its new app known as Futura, and seven other AI-driven solutions from the Group have been recognized among the most innovative initiatives at The Innovators 2026 awards run by Global Finance. The publication also singled out Garanti BBVA Partners and AI Factory as leading financial innovation labs.

Christophe Galfard is a theoretical physicist and science communicator, renowned for his ability to explain the great concepts of the universe in an accessible and engaging way. He earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he worked alongside Stephen Hawking, one of the most influential figures in contemporary physics.

BBVA has secured 3rd place among the best banks in Italy in the 2026 edition of the 'World’s Best Banks' list published by Forbes. This result marks an improvement over last year, when the bank ranked at the fifth place, and further strengthens its position among the leading financial institutions in the country.

In recent years, Europe has been busy developing one of the world’s most ambitious digital regulatory frameworks, covering matters such as data protection and sharing, artificial intelligence (AI), and operational resilience. The result is a robust framework, but also one that is complex and, at times, fragmented. However, since 2023—with the rise in popularity of tools such as ChatGPT—and amid heightened geopolitical tensions, there has been mounting criticism of an approach that is sometimes seen as overly regulatory and as one of the causes of the EU’s technological gap relative to other regions.

Garanti BBVA has expanded its export financing solutions by making its Turkish lira (TRY) Export Loan accessible through digital channels. Clients can now draw on their existing limits without visiting a branch and meet their financing needs quickly and easily, with financing terms of up to 24 months.

The BBVA Foundation presented its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change and Environmental Sciences category to Carl Wunsch (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for his foundational contributions to studies that revealed the impact of global warming on the world’s oceans. The awardee researcher “had the early insight that the ocean plays a central role in regulating Earth’s climate,” the committee noted.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera to Unsuk Chin. The South Korean artist, who taught herself to play the piano and compose, has developed a “singular technique of great solidity” defined “by her refined command of sound and masterful ability to transform it into a play of illusions and metamorphoses, marking her out as one of the great innovators in contemporary music,” the award committee noted.

Garanti BBVA recently launched ‘My Family,’ a new section on its Garanti BBVA Mobile app that lets parents manage their children’s finances on a single screen. This all-in-one solution features expense-tracking, educational content and financial products, such as checking accounts, savings accounts, Türkiye’s Individual Pension System (BES) and cards.

BBVA has created an artificial intelligence assistant with ChatGPT Enterprise to support data analysis at Internal Audit, from validating and designing tests to interpreting results. The solution—always with a human overseeing it—enables more consistent use of analytics and is expected to increase productivity by around 10% in audits that call for large-scale data analysis. It also reduces manual and repetitive tasks and frees up time for activities where human professional judgment is essential, such as analyzing anomalies and assessing risks.

BBVA Spark has granted €4 million in financing to TaxDown, a fintech specialized in digital taxation in Spain with a presence in Latin America. The operation will accelerate the company’s growth, the development of new AI-based solutions and the expansion of its technological team. This financing benefits from the support of the European Union – NextGenerationEU and the European Investment Fund, with with Spain supporting the program through the InvestEU State compartment.

BBVA is making its conversational application available to ChatGPT users, allowing them to directly access information about the bank’s products and services in Italy and Germany right from the assistant. BBVA is one of the first financial companies to offer its own app within ChatGPT, one of the most widely used conversational assistants in the world.

American oncologist Carl June and French geneticist Michel Sadelain have been awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for revolutionizing cancer treatment through immunotherapy based on so-called CAR-T cells. Their work has paved the way for therapies therapies for patients with various types of blood cancer, including leukemia, which have already benefited “tens of thousands of individuals, including many children,” according to the award committee’s citation.

BBVA has joined a consortium of eleven major European financial institutions that have formed a joint venture, Qivalis, to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin. The aim is to enable faster and cheaper payments, as well as the settlement of digital assets within a regulated environment backed by all the safeguards that a European bank can offer. The commercial launch is slated for the second half of 2026, once the technical and regulatory developments have been completed.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies has gone in this eighteenth edition to engineers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen for designing the cryptographic technologies that “underpin today’s digital age,” in the words of the committee, protecting the security of “millions of connected devices worldwide.”

Garanti BBVA was recently honored with two awards at the 2025 Digital Banking Awards, organized by international financial publishing group World Finance, for the ‘Best Digital Bank in Retail Banking’ and the ‘Best Mobile Banking App.’ The awards are a reflection of the bank’s approach to digital banking and its focus on customers.

Garanti BBVA completely reshaped digital banking in 2025. With generative artificial intelligence at the heart of its digital strategy, the bank has evolved the user experience, making it more intuitive, more personalized and smarter. Garanti BBVA Mobile has transformed the banking experience by seamlessly integrating into millions of customers’ daily lives.

At the 'Beyond Hype: crypto meets banking at BBVA' event, BBVA Spark brought together leaders from the crypto industry such as Andrei Manuel, founder of Bit2Me, Catriona Wingate, head of banking at BVNK in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Kaushik Sthankiya, head of banking at Kraken. The experts analysed the factors driving the growth of crypto companies, the opportunities and challenges they face when coexisting with traditional financial infrastructures, and how collaboration with banks can make a difference.

BBVA’s Turkish unit has introduced a new tool on its Garanti BBVA Mobile app to help customers manage their personal finances, improve their financial health and plan for the future. ‘My Credit Coach’ provides an overview of each customer’s financial situation based on their banking history and offers personalized recommendations.