BBVA and OpenAI have entered into a strategic alliance aimed at redefining the future of financial services through the use of artificial intelligence. The agreement, announced by Carlos Torres Vila, Chair of BBVA, and Sam Altman, CEO and Co-founder of OpenAI, marks a unique and unprecedented level of collaboration in the financial industry to build a radically customer-centric proposition and to drive a more productive and efficient operating model.

BBVA’s Turkish unit has been named Türkiye’s Best Transaction Bank by Euromoney, one of the world’s most respected financial publications, in recognition of the bank’s performance in transaction banking and its ongoing investment in technology-driven solutions for corporate clients.

The Business Network for LGBTI Diversity and Inclusion (REDI) named BBVA as one of the leading organizations in the ‘Top Líderes LGBTI+ 2025,’ officially held on December 10 to coincide with International Human Rights Day. This recognition underscores the bank’s contributions to creating inclusive, safe and respectful work environments, as well as its commitment to equal opportunities.

BBVA has successfully completed its €993 million share buyback program, launched on October 31, as part of its ordinary shareholder remuneration for the 2024 financial year. The deal is part of the bank’s strategic plan, which plans to have €36 billion to be returned to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks by 2028. Of this amount, some €13 billion will be distributed in the short term¹.

Garanti BBVA has finalized a syndicated loan as part of its international funding program. The transaction focuses on sustainability and includes one-year (€61 million / $97.75 million), two-year (€28 million plus $157 million) and three-year $75 million) tranches. It attracted strong interest from global investors, with 49 financial institutions from 22 countries participating.

BBVA has received In-Principle Approval (IPA) from ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) to obtain a Category 4 (CAT4) license. This authorization will allow BBVA to expand its range of corporate and investment banking service activities and strengthen its position as a strategic partner for corporate and institutional clients in the region. Eduardo Ortiz Gross, Head of BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) in the Middle East, has been appointed Senior Executive Officer for the Abu Dhabi branch, where he will lead the bank’s operations across the region.

BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) leads the project finance market in Chile, with seven transactions and an estimated volume of approximately USD 500 million in 2025, according to LSEG Syndicated Loans data as of the end of September 2025. These deals, focused on energy transition and sustainable infrastructure projects, reflect the bank’s firm commitment to sustainable finance and the country’s development. Felipe Serani, Head of BBVA CIB in Chile, underscores that this progress signals “a paradigm shift in financing: from profitability to sustainability as a structural pillar of growth.”

BBVA’s Chief Executive Officer, Onur Genç, took part this Thursday in the Global Banking Summit hosted by the Financial Times in London. During his address, he remarked that the bank remains firmly focused on delivering its 2025–2029 Strategic Plan, which is built around profitable, organic growth. Along these lines, he pointed to BBVA’s expansion in Europe through its digital banking model in markets such as Italy and Germany. He also noted that the bank is firmly committed to “growing organically in the markets where we already operate.”

BBVA’s digital banks in Europe are exploring what could become the first banking app in the world natively integrated within ChatGPT, marking a bold step forward in how financial services integrate with conversational AI. This demonstration shows how people will be able to discover BBVA’s products and services in Italy and Germany through a dedicated BBVA app built directly into OpenAI’s conversational assistant.

BBVA celebrated the fourth anniversary of its digital retail bank in Italy, which currently has over 800,000 customers and expects to reach one million in 2026. Since last November, BBVA Italy has increased its customer base by 35 percent, and has multiplied the financing granted to customers eightfold, including 1,800 mortgages. The success of the BBVA Italy model is driving the Group’s organic growth strategy across the rest of Europe, as CEO Onur Genç explained at a meeting with the media at the bank’s new offices in Milan. “Our priority is to consolidate our progress and ensure sustainable long-term growth: expanding our presence in key financial products, such as investments, and continuing to attract customers from traditional banks seeking a more modern experience”, Genç said.

The COP30 Climate Summit, held in Belém, culminated with a dual but pretty clear-cut message: climate multilateralism is still very much alive and capable of delivering agreements, although the pace of progress is still far too slow if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Global Finance magazine has just announced the winners of its 'World’s Best SME Banks' awards. In this year’s edition, BBVA has received a double accolade: ‘Best SME Bank in Spain’ and ‘Best SME Bank in Western Europe.’ These awards showcase its business support model, its growth within this segment, and its ability to boost productivity, digitalization, and sustainability among small and medium-sized enterprises.

This November marks one year since the launch of European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s sustainability simplification package, ‘Omnibus.’ The goal is clear: to boost the competitiveness of European companies, reducing the bureaucratic burden of the sustainable finance framework.

Shares, artwork, real estate… in fact pretty much any asset, can now have a digital twin. Tokenization is reshaping investments by making it possible to split tangible, real-world assets into tokens that can be bought or sold in a matter of seconds, with the utmost transparency and with no intermediaries. So what are the steps involved in turning tangible value from the physical world into its digital counterpart?

Garanti BBVA once again demonstrated its leadership at one of the most prestigious events in finance and technology, the Sardis Awards. The bank was honored in seven categories, winning four gold and three silver awards in categories related to creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, social impact and its customer-oriented approach.

In this episode of BBVA Greenfluencers, we delve into the world of impact investing with Finance in Motion, a leading asset manager dedicated to driving sustainable development through finance.

BBVA in Italy reaffirms its commitment to meeting the real needs of its customers with two initiatives designed to make one of the year’s busiest spending periods even more rewarding: Great Cashback, which gives back up to €50 on purchases, and the current account offering 3% gross interest, allowing customers to grow their savings without giving up flexibility. A double benefit that enables people to spend smartly and grow their liquidity as Black Friday and the holiday season approach.

BBVA has closed its first growth capital transaction in Finland with Bob W, the Helsinki-born hospitality scaleup focused on redefining the short-stay experience across Europe through technology. This also marks BBVA’s first growth capital deal in Finland, coinciding with the bank’s debut as a key partner at Slush, the renowned global innovation event that gathers more than 13,000 attendees, 2,500 startups and 2,000 investors in Helsinki each year.

BBVA Research reinforces its commitment to innovation applied to economic analysis with the addition of a new section on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to its website.

Garanti BBVA is sharpening its focus on water efficiency, positioning itself at the forefront of Türkiye’s efforts to ensure sustainable industrial growth in water-intensive sectors. Backing a new study prepared in collaboration with the Türkiye Informatics Foundation’s Starting Point platform, the bank examines water usage and efficiency potential in the food, textile, and paper industries. These sectors together account for a major share of industrial water consumption in Türkiye.

In this episode, Pep Ferrís, Head of Corporate & Investment Banking Asia at BBVA, speaks with Anthony Watanabe, Chief Sustainability Officer at Indorama Ventures, a global industry leader in sustainable chemicals and the world’s largest producer and recycler of PET.

Just over a year ago, BBVA created its Digital Banks unit, led by Murat Kalkan, an executive with a strong background in diverse retail banking businesses at BBVA, to drive the bank’s push into new markets with a fully digital model.

BBVA has acted as one of the key banking partners in the financing of the second phase of the Northern Lights project, carried out in partnership with Shell, TotalEnergies and Equinor as a strategic initiative for industrial decarbonisation in Norway. This new phase will increase CO₂ storage capacity and marks a further step in scaling carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) solutions across Europe.

BBVA has secured a place among the world's leading digital banks, according to Euromoney’s latest report,  ‘The World’s Best Digital Banks.' The study evaluated more than 300 institutions globally, placing BBVA in the leadership category alongside digital-native rivals such as Revolut, Nubank, and Singapore-based DBS.

At BBVA, the adoption of artificial intelligence is much more than just a technological change: it represents a profound transformation of the banking business. The bank’s AI strategy is built on leadership and employee empowerment as a way to drive uptake and achieve a truly transformative impact. OpenAI invited Antonio Bravo, Global Head of Data, to take part in its annual event OpenAI Frontiers, where he explained how both entities are already transforming the banking sector, with tangible results.

Garanti BBVA was internationally honored for its design excellence, earning two distinctions from the iF Design Awards for its updated Garanti BBVA mobile app and the Pulse app, and another from the A Design Awards for its ‘My Home, My Car, My Travel’ project — showcasing its highly innovative approach to user experience and digital design.