Online and Mobile Customers Surge as BBVA Invests in Digital

Need to Know

• Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has been undergoing steady digital transformation and is reducing operational costs, increasing ease and financial options for customers, and reaping the benefits.
• More than half of BBVA’s 56.3 million active customers are now interacting with the bank via mobile services.
• Based in Spain, BBVA is one of the world’s largest banks with over $800 billion in managed assets.
• Less than 10% of BBVA’s customers use non-mobile access points, such as physical branches.
• Digital now accounts for 58.1% of BBVA’s sales, up from 49.8% last year.

Analysis

One of the largest banks in the world is seeing its digital transformation efforts pay off with massive upticks in mobile and digital customers, lowered operations costs, and increased sales in branches. BBVA has reportedly doubled digital banking customers and tripled mobile banking customers in the past four years.

BBVA’s Global Head of Client Solutions, David Puente, said, “As BBVA announced last week, one of our key strategic priorities is to do more to support customers to improve their financial health.”

This holds true when looking at insights about the digital banking app. The amount of time on the home page overview has decreased, while the time spent getting insights from finances grew from 37% to 44.5% in the past four years.

This is also reflected in the increase of time customers spend looking at their finances on BBVA apps, which used to be an average of 1.1 min in Spain, and is an average of 2.4 min only a year later. BBVA also introduced smart digital banking options that help customers save a certain amount from every paycheck, or round off savings, where the cents skimmed from the top of transactions are automatically put into a savings account. 

Clearly, the bank’s digital strategies are working: more customers worldwide are getting comfortable with the ease of their digital banking options and accessing them on a daily basis.

This ease of digital banking options is also reflected in the reduced time bankers spent helping people with mundane tasks in person. In the US, employees were able to spend more time offering advice on significant matters, which resulted in a 42% increase in products sold per branch per month since Q1 2017.

“And that really is one of our core goals—to use the human experience and technological tools we have in the bank, coupled with increasingly clever and personal data analysis, to support people to achieve their financial ambitions – whether it is a long-term goal, or managing their day-to-day lives” Puente adds.

BBVA’s digital focus doesn’t only help customers, however, but also the bank’s operational efficiency. As digital banking grows in popularity and minimizes the amount of teller intervention necessary, so the processing costs per transaction across the BBVA Group drop by 31% over the past two years. 

It’s no wonder that Forrester awarded BBVA as having the best mobile banking app in the world for three years running. BBVA was also recognized by Javelin Strategy & Research as the leader of its 2019 Mobile and Online Banking Scorecards for its mobile banking app and online banking service.

Compared to the sometimes rocky digital transformations of banks like Goldman Sachs, which experienced a loss of $1.3 billion despite multiple revamps, BBVA is clearly doing something right and is a strong example of serving its customers in the best way they know now. Digital transformation is clearly a key factor for banks right now, as leading US institutions such as Bank of America believe a strong digital strategy can go as far as to double a bank’s market share.