BBVA at the Singapore Fintech Festival: opportunities for employees, customers and the planet

Innovation has no time for barriers or borders, in fact it helps to build bridges between people, countries and industries. BBVA showed its work on these ties at the recent Singapore Fintech Festival, the world’s biggest fintech event, held between 7th and 11th December.

The event took place in a hybrid format due to pandemic-related restrictions: more than 60,000 participants enjoyed talks by 1,400 speakers thanks to an online platform with 24-hour broadcasts and 40 satellite events held in cities across the globe, including one by BBVA from its headquarters in Madrid.

“We are delighted to be here driving forward our cooperation with the fintech ecosystem, which is bringing outside innovation to the core of our business”, said Jordi García Bosch, Head of New Business Models & Strategy for Client Solutions at BBVA at the start of the event.

Opportunities for talent

Innovation doesn’t just come from fintechs, rather it can start with employees thanks to intrapreneurship. It is therefore important to foster internal opportunities. “The most important factor for developing people and prosperity is talent”, noted Carlos Casas, BBVA’s Global Head of Talent and Culture.

To make that talent truly committed, Casas explains how BBVA inspires people to work for one reason: “To bring the age of opportunity to everyone”. They also carry out their work following common values that the manager detailed: “The customer comes first, we think big and we work as a single team”.

The bank’s talent strategies are not based on old hierarchies. In Casas’ view, people “need to take responsibility for their own careers” and they should be helped to develop the skills they’ll need in the future. Along these lines, the Ninja initiative allows any employee to acquire technological knowledge and skills. Also, a few years ago the bank began the agile transformation of its workforce because, in Casas’ words, “the world is changing very quickly in this fourth industrial revolution and we need to adapt”.

Opportunities for customers

In this landscape of vertiginous changes, meeting new customer demands in order to attract them is key. In fact, one of BBVA’s strategic priorities is to grow its customer numbers, and that is precisely the focus of its New Business Models programme. “We want to transform the bank, developing new capabilities and novel lines of business to bring new customers and income to the bank”, stated García Bosch.

In his speech, the manager outlined the four pillars of the programme:

• Alliances with financial sector technology companies, such as Alipay, Aper and Bdeo.
• Developing new business models. For instance, the bank acquired Mexican fintech Openpay, which offers a payment gateway for online purchases, and is now expanding its services in South America.
• Research into new technologies. One of these is quantum computing, the application of which to finances has been evaluated in a proof of concept with the startup Multiverse.
• Investment portfolio management. On the one hand, BBVA finances startups (for example, it is an investment partner of SolarisBank, which specialises in digital assets), and it also gives backing to venture capital funds like Propel Venture Partners.

To get these pillars off the ground, the programme has two facilitators. The first is open innovation, “key to being connected to all of you and the ecosystem so that we can work together”, said García Bosch, appealing to fintechs. The second is open banking, which “is not just the technological platform where we present our APIs to third parties”, but also the way we show products and services and “build business” with partners.

Sharing the API structure is one of the keys to BBVA applications in different countries. They are all based on the same mobile platform, GloMo (Global Mobile), developed globally by multidisciplinary teams. “With this platform we can roll out the same functionalities from one country to another in a short period of time”, explained Javier López Chicote, Head of Global Mobile Banking at BBVA, during his presentation. Not only can the bank’s teams easily integrate tools into the platform, but fintech startups also have the opportunity to do so.

GloMo isn’t the only innovation in the field of mobile banking. At the event, López Chicote demonstrated how the new Aqua cards launched in Spain can be left anywhere without fear of someone using them fraudulently, seen as they have neither printed numbering (PAN) nor the expiry date on them, and also their CVV is dynamic. To strengthen security, customers have to access the app and check those details when making a purchase.

Opportunities for society and the planet

As well as offering added value to customers, mobile banking can favour financial inclusion in Latin America. Proof of this is the Bancamía application, part of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation (FMBBVA), aimed at vulnerable entrepreneurs in Colombia and Peru. “It maximises their autonomy and improves their productivity so that they can carry out basic transactions from their mobile phones”, explained Javier M. Flores, CEO of the FMBBVA.

The app is an example of the foundation’s efforts to provide  financial products and services, technical training and support to 2.3 million entrepreneurs in the region, support which is given to women in particular. In this sense, Flores underlined that “our commitment to digital transformation has allowed us to continue accompanying our entrepreneurs at a distance during these months”.

BBVA is not only generating opportunities for present-day society. It is also looking to the future in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. “For me, sustainability tries to meet the objectives of current generations without sacrificing the ability of future generations to satisfy their own interests”, stated Ricardo Laiseca, Head of BBVA’s Global Sustainability Office, in his speech.

Therefore the bank committed to mobilising €100 billion by 2025 in sustainable finance and to fight climate change, 40% of which it has already reached, and it is supporting other players in the green transition. Laiseca defines its stance: “We have a unique and clear value proposal based on combining sustainable transformation with digital transformation”.

Issuing the first green bond structured using blockchain technology, launching a carbon footprint calculator for companies based on data analytics and alliances with various institutions to improve its business customers’ energy efficiency attest to that eagerness to combine sustainability and digitisation.

Sustainability, talent, and technology are essential foundations for the bridges that BBVA builds to remain solid even in a changing environment. Among these connections is the one that the bank maintains with the global fintech ecosystem, a link that was strengthened at the Singapore Fintech Festival to continue creating opportunities through innovation.