Highlights
- BBVA announced the purchase of Unnim. This acquisition:
- Has a great strategic meaning for the Bank, because it completes the franchise in Catalonia, where the market share is lower than the natural share in Spain.
- Will add value once the BBVA business model is implemented.
- Risk is ring-fenced, given that 80% of the losses derived from exposure to the developer sector and to real estate assets are covered through an asset protection scheme.
- A new structure has been put in place for more specialized management of the SME sector, which numbers 240,000 customers with a volume of lending of €9,370m and customer funds of €5,212m.
- Highlights in innovation include:
- Deployment of the “contact-less” technology. BBVA announced that it would participate in the pioneering “Madrid Contact-less” project for non-contact payments. This system allows customers to carry out transactions of up to €20 by simply bringing a card close to a reader without signing or entering the PIN number. As part of the plan, and to make it easier to pay for taxis in Madrid, BBVA and Radioteléfono Taxi in Madrid have presented the new point-of-sale (POS) terminals that passengers can use to pay for taxis in the fleet with contact-less cards.
- The development of “BBVA Contigo”, which is an innovative model of customer relations and remote management, for those people who need personalized advice as a complement to the use of remote channels.
- Finally, highlights in corporate responsibility include:
- The Territorios Solidarios (Solidarity Territories) project, through which BBVA supports social projects presented and voted for by the Group’s employees in Spain. In the first quarter of 2012, voting and selection took place on the solidarity projects. As a result, 202 projects received financial assistance of €1.9m in all, with a maximum of €10,000 for each project.
- Adherence to the Code of Good Practices.