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In digital innovation, however, no bank in the US can touch BBVA Compass, which wins the award for North America’s best digital bank. Whereas large domestic banks have pushed back against disrupters, BBVA Compass exemplifies what can happen when a bank embraces them. That journey began more than five years ago when the bank began overhauling its core technology system into a real-time platform, making it among the first to implement real time processing. It was almost unheard of for US banking customers to have that level of transparency and control, but then BBVA Compass took it to a new level: it opened its platform to digital innovators. As a result, customers of BBVA Compass can send and receive funds instantly through Dwolla rather than wait for Automated Clearing House.
Chad Ballard, director of business development and professional services for BBVA’s new digital businesses area explains: “The few real-time solutions in the US are still evolving, and adoption by consumers will take time, so we took a step forward by teaming up with Dwolla. It created a way to authenticate across the bank and to link accounts and move money in real time.” Unafraid of collaboration, earlier this year BBVA Compass also forged an alliance with online firm FutureAdvisor.
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Pepe Olalla, |
In mobile technology the bank is a clear winner. Its apps consistently win best in class and now the bank has added a digital wallet. In December 2015, BBVA Compass also teamed up with alternative credit agency eCredible to provide credit cards to credit-invisible consumers. “It’s a means of serving the underbanked and the unbanked without the traditional credit scoring methods like Fico,” says Pepe Olalla, head of business development at BBVA Compass. The bank also benefits from client-user experience innovations from its subsidiaries Simple, an online bank, and Spring Studios, a user-experience design firm. “We are trying to act and behave like we are a digital company,” says Olalla. Its offices certainly seem to be more akin to a Silicon Valley firm. Its $13.5 million development centre in Alabama has no closed offices and uses the Google suite of collaboration tools to communicate internally.
