Best bank 2025: CaixaBank
In an ultra-competitive environment, and despite starting from a dominant position, CaixaBank was able to grow in Spain across the board, even as BBVA’s hostile takeover bid for Banco Sabadell rippled across the Spanish banking sector.
CaixaBank ended 2024 with a market share of almost 25% in deposits, with similar slices in loans, investments and life insurance.
A combined BBVA-Sabadell will still be some way behind CaixaBank in terms of its overall business in Spain. Clearly, it has no need to seek growth at the expense of margins. But for chief executive Gonzalo Gortázar, these market-share gains are proof of the effectiveness of its customer proposition.
“Whether or not you can gain market share is the ultimate acid test to tell if what you are doing as a bank is successful and works well,” he tells Euromoney.
CaixaBank is doing better than ever. Net attributable profit rose to €5.79 billion, up 20% on 2023. Return on equity hit a record 15.4% in 2024, with the cost/income ratio falling to 38.5%. Customer funds, as well as consumer and SME lending, all rose.
In areas such as bancassurance, CaixaBank is one of the main models for other European banks looking to reinternalise product factories. In 2024, net inflows to mutual funds, savings insurance and pension plans roughly doubled to €11.4 billion. It was also a standout year for wealth management, where revenues reached €1.8 billion, up 12%, with wealth management balances rising strongly by 11.7% to €263 billion.
CaixaBank’s dominant position in Spain is largely down to its transformational takeover of Bankia four years ago. With that integration out of the way, it has been better able to focus on its core businesses – while meeting and surpassing its medium-term targets on business volumes, efficiency, profitability and risk, as well as capital distributions.
In its latest strategic plan, it was able to take a longer-term view on how it can develop its business, looking at ways to deepen its relationship with customers through activities adjacent to finance and through a more intuitive mobile customer journey.
These ecosystem plays are more achievable for CaixaBank because of its domestic scale. Initiatives are simpler to roll out because of a relative lack of distraction from public M&A battles, and thanks to its simpler geographic focus.
The firm’s scale means it can afford to invest in technology. Indeed, its latest plan will see the bank step up its investment in tech by €1 billion during the next three years, reaching €5 billion.
“We have the luxury of having the full concentration of our business in our Iberian market. Banks are complex institutions, touching every aspect of life. If you add to that dimension, too many territories and countries with different dynamics, it makes life harder for management.”
Best investment bank 2025: Santander
Santander demonstrated all-round strength across its investment banking operations in Spain during 2024, leading a range of successful and innovative deals.
Among several key developments last year, one of the most important was its leadership in debt capital markets. The bank recorded 76 transactions totalling €15.7 billion, securing an 11.4% market share. A landmark transaction was the Spanish government’s €15 billion 10-year benchmark bond – the largest order book ever achieved by the sovereign.
Syndicated lending is another area where the bank excelled, reaching the top of the bookrunner league table with €10.1 billion across 69 deals. A transaction that stands out was the €3.4 billion financing for Zegona’s acquisition of Vodafone Spain – a transformational deal in the telecoms sector where Santander acted as both bookrunner and sole provider of the OPA guarantee.
In project finance, the bank led with €4.4 billion across 44 deals, including €3.1 billion in renewables. This included Sonnedix’s €2.5 billion refinancing of 1.1GW of solar assets across Spain, Italy, and France – an innovative platform deal that supports energy transition. The bank also led in ESG-linked syndicated loans, with an 18.7% market share, further demonstrating its commitment to sustainable finance.
On the equity side, Santander acted as joint bookrunner in the €2.745 billion Puig IPO – the largest in Spain since Aena – and sole global coordinator for OHLA’s €70 million capital increase.
Best investment bank for DCM 2025: HSBC
The bank’s debt capital markets franchise distinguished itself through four standout transactions in the awards period that underline its structuring skill and deep distribution power.
One of the firm’s standout mandates was Banco Santander’s benchmark additional tier-1 (AT1). By combining the new perpetual non-call with a simultaneous tender for its legacy note, the team delivered a seamless capital optimisation transaction. A rapid morning launch captured global liquidity, the coupon was tightened materially from initial thoughts and demand held firm even after the size was set – marking the largest single-tranche euro AT1 since the pandemic and Santander’s first to carry an investment grade label.
Banco Sabadell trusted HSBC to guide its inaugural sterling senior preferred issue. A day-and-a-half marketing schedule introduced the credit to UK investors, producing an orderbook that comfortably exceeded supply and allowed pricing inside guidance. The success broadened Sabadell’s funding toolbox and demonstrated HSBC’s ability to unlock new currency markets for southern European issuers.
In the green bond arena, Iberdrola returned to sterling after a 15-year absence with a long-dated sustainable note. It was launched immediately after quarterly results and before rival supply yielded the biggest sterling orderbook of the year, enabling execution near euro-level funding costs and attracting an overwhelming majority of green-focused accounts.
Finally, the Basque government’s sustainable transaction achieved demand multiples well above target, priced without concession and reaffirmed the issuer’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials. The deal was the first regional Spanish print of the year and pushed the authority’s sustainable issuance total past a key milestone, illustrating the bank’s leadership in public-sector ESG financing.
Best digital bank 2025: CaixaBank
CaixaBank took tangible steps to strengthen its position as Spain’s foremost digital lender in the awards period.
It expanded its online customer base from 11.5 million to 12.1 million and lifted digital banking penetration to 45.4 %, 14 percentage points ahead of the next-largest competitor. By January 2025 fully 69 % of all CaixaBank clients were operating through digital channels, underlining the bank’s ability to migrate day-to-day financing activity onto a low-cost, high-engagement platform.
Central to this success was the complete rebuild of the CaixaBankNow app. A new, more flexible architecture means upgrades can be released without waiting for Apple or Google store approvals, while an artificial intelligence-enabled semantic search engine places account queries, card controls and peer-to-peer payments one step away. Early results show shorter query times and fewer calls to the contact centre, evidence of more efficient front end for retail financing services.
The same technology focus is powering tangible gains in the bank’s financing franchise. The newly launched Ready2Finance service lets businesses and individuals spread the cost of transfers, taxes and supplier invoices in a single click, offering a single instalment, preset schedule or fully personalised terms. By embedding three distinct repayment modalities into everyday payment flows, CaixaBank has opened a fresh source of short-term credit while keeping risk assessment and execution entirely digital.
The bank’s open-banking mortgage platform is another point of differentiation, now channelling 85% of property purchase leads directly from real estate portals to CaixaBank underwriters, cutting decision times at the point when borrowers most value speed.
Finally, a redesigned e-commerce journey, featuring lighter pages, faster load times and dynamic catalogues, has raised conversion into both financial and non-financial products, further deepening the bank’s syndicated financing pipeline.
Best bank for large corporates 2025: BBVA
BBVA Spain’s corporate banking business translated its scale into clear, transaction-level wins over the review period.
Leveraging a new governance model that aligns product specialists with sector heads, the bank gained share in a contracting market, repeatedly operating as bookrunner on large-cap facilities across energy, infrastructure and technology, media and telecommunications. This multi-product coverage allowed BBVA to increase overall investment banking and finance revenues while most of its peers retreated.
The bank has prioritised digitisation as one of the key pillars of its growth strategy in the space. Its cloud-based SCF Global Solution now allows multinationals to fund suppliers in multiple countries through a single portal, with automated enterprise resource planning system integration and unlimited supplier onboarding. By centralising payments and offering competitive BBVA funding, the platform has unlocked working capital relief for thousands of vendors and deepened the bank’s role as coordinating agent in global syndicated payables programmes.
In sustainability, the lender’s industry-first Sustainable Transaction Product Framework, complemented by its new Sustainable Confirming line, classifies each drawdown as green, social or sustainable and ties pricing to the borrower’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) key performance indicators. This structure already supports high-volume trade and cash management flows, while channelling funds to clients’ decarbonisation projects, positioning BBVA at the core of their transition finance strategies.
The bank has also strengthened its ESG advisory practice. Staffed by sector specialists, the service has secured lead roles in landmark hydrogen, biomethane and renewable energy syndicated facilities. By bundling strategic ESG assessment with debt structuring, BBVA is steering capital toward next-generation infrastructure and opening fresh fee streams in underwriting and distribution.
Best bank for SMEs 2025: Santander
Santander continues to deliver tailored, innovative and accessible financial solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. With a customer first strategy and a strong digital transformation agenda, Santander has built the most comprehensive and user-centric SME banking experience in the country.
The bank’s SME digital platform now supports 78% of sales through digital channels, complemented by top-rated physical service.
Key innovations include a 360º digital dashboard for factoring, a new Confirming subsite and a multi-product digital contract system that streamlines financing, tax payments and international trade services.
Santander also launched Insurance Planet for Companies, a unified insurance management solution, and enhanced its leasing and renting services with real-time digital tools. The bank’s SME clients benefit from seamless access to public aid platforms, cybersecurity tools and international trade services – all integrated into a single digital ecosystem.
With a commitment to simplicity, personalisation and efficiency, Santander continues to empower Spanish SMEs with the tools and support they need to grow.
Best bank for ESG 2025: Santander
Santander Spain has embedded environmental goals deep into its operations. All corporate centres now run fully on renewable electricity and hold ISO 14001 and Zero Waste certifications. The bank eliminated printed brochures in branches, saving 71 tonnes of paper, streamlined internal processes to cut a further 10 million sheets, and installed rooftop solar panels and extra electric vehicle chargers.
Energy retrofits across its premises and three reforestation projects under the Motor Verde programme, expected to sequester 80,000 tonnes of CO₂, underline the progress towards its 2050 net-zero ambition and its recently disclosed financed emissions targets for residential and commercial real estate portfolios.
The bank’s syndicated lending franchise has become a cornerstone of Spain’s energy transition. For the 10th consecutive year, it led the domestic league tables for renewable energy project finance, arranging multi-bank facilities that keep new wind and solar plants on schedule and helping clients lock in long-term green power offtakes. This sustained leadership shows that Santander can mobilise large pools of private capital quickly and at scale.
By adhering to the new Green MRR ICO line, Santander was among the first to channel subsidised state funding into syndicated loans that finance cleaner machinery, electric fleets and energy saving upgrades; early take-up has already lowered borrowing costs for mid-sized manufacturers. At the same time, its growing portfolio of sustainability-linked loans ties margins to borrowers’ decarbonisation milestones, turning loan pricing into an incentive for sharper emissions cuts.
International partnerships are broadening the reach of this expertise. Selection for the European Investment Bank’s Green Gateway advisory programme gives the bank direct access to EU technical support when structuring complex cross-border syndications, while membership of the Industry Transition and Energy Initiative positions it to steer capital into large-scale re-industrialisation projects centred on clean hydrogen, circular materials and advanced electrification.
Santander’s commitment to transparency was also evident. In 2024 it voluntarily disclosed the financed emissions baselines of its residential mortgage and commercial real estate portfolios, creating a data platform that will guide future deal structures and help investors track progress against the Paris Agreement.
Best bank for sustainable finance 2025: BBVA
BBVA has reinforced its standing as a leader in sustainable finance by reaching its long-term green financing objective well ahead of schedule. Building on this momentum, the bank now intends to mobilise an even larger volume of sustainable finance in the second half of the decade, signalling an even deeper commitment to the climate transition.
Its strategy centres on projects that cut emissions at source. The bank has financed a broad programme of rooftop solar installations, enabling both households and enterprises to generate renewable electricity while lowering energy bills. Complementing this effort, it offers bespoke transition loans for small and medium-sized enterprises, helping them adopt cleaner technologies without disrupting day-to-day operations.
At the same time, BBVA is accelerating the shift to electric mobility. Recently it emerged as the country’s leading lender for electric vehicles, making zero-emission transport accessible to a wider segment of drivers and businesses alike.
To catalyse the next wave of innovation, the bank has created a specialist cleantech financing unit in Madrid dedicated to renewable energy assets and breakthrough decarbonisation technologies. It has further underlined its commitment by allocating significant capital to domestic decarbonisation funds, channelling steady funding to projects poised to shape Spain’s low-carbon economy.
Best bank for customer experience 2025: BBVA
BBVA has embedded its Radical Customer Perspective approach into every layer of the organisation, treating each interaction as an opportunity to surprise and delight.
A dedicated team monitors experience indicators day by day, flags even the smallest friction points and mobilises more than a hundred improvement initiatives at any moment. This real-time discipline lets the bank correct issues before they spread and keeps service quality consistently high across branches, apps and contact centres.
Operational results already show the impact of this approach. Digital channels now operate with near total uptime and most queries are solved on the first contact, while call-abandonment has fallen to levels rarely seen in the sector. Customers experience fewer delays, fewer repeat calls and a noticeably smoother journey, which in turn strengthens trust in the brand.
Listening to customers also prompted a wholesale rewrite of customer communications. Most emails, push notifications and letters were redesigned with simpler language, clearer next steps and personalised context, removing jargon that previously caused confusion. Early feedback highlights a sharp drop in follow-up questions and a rise in customer satisfaction scores linked to transparency and reassurance.
BBVA’s partnership with OpenAI extends this customer first mindset into the realm of generative artificial intelligence. A broad suite of models now powers digital assistants that offer tailored financial insights around the clock, while an internal Servicebox equips relationship managers with instant answers to operational and commercial queries. Behind the scenes, automated workflows accelerate document checks and fraud controls, freeing staff to focus on higher value conversations.
Best investment bank for financing 2025: BBVA
BBVA’s recent track record in syndicated financing is marked by a series of landmark transactions that underline its capacity to lead complex structures, absorb underwriting risk and drive the energy transition.
In European leveraged finance, the bank’s role as global coordinator, underwriter and active bookrunner of the MasOrange transaction set a clear benchmark for execution. The four-part, cross-border loan package that funded the combination of Orange Spain and MásMóvil was the largest telecom financing closed on the continent in 2024, reflecting BBVA’s ability to channel diverse pools of liquidity and deliver certainty of funds against a highly visible timetable.
In the corporate sphere, BBVA demonstrated unrivalled distribution power through the refinancing of ACS’s revolving and term-loan facility. As bookrunner and mandated lead arranger, it brought together close to 50 domestic and international institutions, smoothly extending the builder’s liquidity horizon while keeping pricing in line with market conditions. The scale of the syndicate underlined investor confidence in the bank’s underwriting and bookrunning skills.
BBVA’s leadership in green and infrastructure finance was also on show. For BRUC Energy’s Berlin portfolio, the bank served as mandated lead arranger and hedge provider on a gigawatt-scale solar programme spread across 14 sites nationwide. The construction facility, closed under tight deadlines, set a benchmark for large-scale photovoltaic funding in Spain.
Additionally, BBVA was also sole bookrunner for the financing of the Basque Hydrogen project, Spain’s first commercial electrolysis unit. By tailoring a bespoke structure for this inaugural asset, the bank opened the door for future hydrogen schemes and cemented its role as a frontrunner in emerging clean-tech finance.
Best bank for consumers 2025: CaixaBank
With more than 18 million customers in Spain, CaixaBank is a benchmark for how to effectively reach and utilise scale in retail banking, winning Euromoney’s award as Spain’s best bank for consumers 2025.
One element of its success is how it is increasingly able to target its service, products and staff to the varying needs of its customer base – aiming not just for greater efficiencies in its operations, but also better service.
“Since we have more scale, we can segment our customer base more easily, both via remote channels and at branch level,” Jaume Masana, head of retail, private and business banking, tells Euromoney.
The greater scope for digital interaction, such as video calls, means a large proportion of relationship managers are no longer allocated by branch rather than operating from a central hub.
The bank has recently redesigned the structure of that remote network so relationship managers can concentrate on a smaller number of high-value or high-potential clients, further improving service and commercial potential. Reconfiguration of coverage around central hubs has gone together with a deep reconceptualisation of its branch network.
The bank is, in fact, expanding the number of municipalities where it has some physical presence. It covers more localities than any other bank in Spain. Nevertheless, it has dramatically reduced its number of branches since its acquisition of Bankia four years ago. Branches have become fewer, but bigger in terms of the number of people and specialist expertise.
“Proximity is important, but less than before, because of digitalisation. Instead, the quality of expertise and speed of response is more important for many of our customers,” Masana says.
“We’ve also increased the specialisation of our network. Instead of two branches with five people each, we might have one branch with 10 people. In that bigger branch, you can have a specialist in insurance, a specialist in loans, in premier banking, or in investment advice, and so on.”
As other European banks have noticed, the importance of CaixaBank’s product factories in areas like asset management, insurance, and corporate and investment banking is a large part of why it makes strategic sense to operate as a universal bank beyond Spain.
The greater specialisation of its staff and service, however, is not just present in its business lines but also in the way it covers different demographics – again, helped by its scale and focus on retail banking in Iberia.
Aiming mainly for younger people who might otherwise be lured away by rival newcomers, CaixaBank’s in-house digital consumer platform imagin grew customer numbers by 11% in 2024, reaching 3.5 million and making it the country’s biggest neobank. It also stands out for being profitable, and a primary account provider, with around half of imagin’s adult customers paying in their salary.
Masana underlines that imagin’s value proposition stands out partly for the simplicity of its offering – something other big consumer banks in Europe are also now focusing on achieving in response to the neobanks. That means an outstanding card experience, basic savings products, and small loans for things like education or buying a scooter.
“It’s fresh, it’s simple, and it’s digital,” Masana summarises. “You have the best things of being a new proposition, and the things an incumbent can offer, such as the big number of ATMs that we have across the country.”
Over the past decade, imagin has built up a commanding share of fintech and neobank usage among young adults.
At the other end of the age spectrum, the bank is increasingly tailoring products and services to older people, with Spain having one of the world’s longest life expectancies, and older people being especially important for its asset and wealth management franchise.
That has already involved numerous initiatives, from training staff to better help older people to putting more seats in its branches, boosting its net promoter scores among older customers.
Now the bank is focusing even more on older customers, with an advisory board on how to better serve the demographic – leading to new annuity, tailored insurance and reverse mortgage products, as well as new partnerships with care providers, universities and volunteering schemes.
Another element of how the bank is deploying its scale to bring forward its business and relationships lies with new embedded finance initiatives in activities adjacent to finance.
It has relaunched an in-house used car platform, Facilitea Coches, and prepared to launch a similar service for Spanish residential property listings, partnering with estate agents.
These projects are partly viable because of the network effect provided by its large customer base.
“When we look at the business, we see opportunities in areas adjacent to our business,” says Masana. “We have a competitive advantage there, because we have the clients, we know the suppliers, and we understand the market dynamics – and because we have the credibility, the name. That’s why we can do better than our rivals not just in pure banking business but also in the ecosystem around it.”
