Banking on happy customers

Since its founding in 1857, BBVA has sought to stay ahead of the times with forward-thinking innovations. In recent years, they’ve focused heavily on investments in cloud, data and AI to create a data-driven, engaging and differentiated customer experience.

This approach has led to significant growth in new customers and revenue, as well as improved efficiency and profitability. The company realized a staggering 117% growth in new customers in the last five years and posted a profit of €8.02B in 2023, the highest earnings in its history.

As part of its ongoing reinvention journey, BBVA partnered with Accenture to develop a new, comprehensive digital sales model. The result? Nearly 50 million customers now interact with the bank through digital channels, and seven out of 10 sales are made digitally. BBVA’s client onboarding process takes just minutes (versus a few days at most other banks), using AI-based facial recognition and text analytics to verify account applicants via mobile app and real-time connections to external data sources to detect fraud.

A wealth of customer insights

These results would not have been possible had the bank not consistently invested in its digital core, harnessing the power of cloud, data and AI to facilitate the rapid development of new capabilities and insights. For example, bank-wide data, predictive analytics and business intelligence deliver a holistic view of the current and lifetime profitability—and likely behavior—of every customer. BBVA is also using Amazon Web Services to create a new global data platform to provide all business units with a unified view of their data and access to more efficient data processing, analysis and insights.

By combining first-party data with new data sources to deliver a step-by-step view of the customer journey, BBVA’s new digital sales model helps the bank prioritize sales initiatives for new customers and cross-sell to existing customers. The new model incorporates strategy and planning, paid media, search engine optimization, marketing automation, analytics, and content production for BBVA’s digital channels to reach individuals in hyper-personalized ways.

The pay off

BBVA’s reinvented sales model is having a massive, positive impact—including a cost-to-income ratio of 41.7%, one of the best among European banks. It’s also helping the bank expand its footprint in specific countries and regions. For instance, in Italy, BBVA opened in new markets with a full digital value proposition that inspired 130,000 new customers to join in the first year alone—a figure which has risen to more than 450,000 in the time since.

Today, with the tools and talent to support continuous reinvention, BBVA can continue to reimagine what’s possible, driving breakthrough experiences that attract and delight customers and add real value.