BBVA Forms Software Development Division to drive Global Scalable Solutions

BBVA has launched a new global software division that brings together more than 16,000 developers across the Group. This new division will speed up delivery of digital solutions and make them more easily scalable across the countries where the bank operates.

Headed by Francisco Leyva, the new unit will execute and coordinate the bank's core technological transformation programs at a global level. This will ensure enhanced productivity, faster updating, improved security and higher quality of software development. "So far, in the Engineering area we had made forward strides in creating multiple global functions (Infrastructure, Communications, Architecture) that lead and coordinate strategy execution with the local units. The growing importance of software development calls for that same level of globalization to leverage the benefits of a global reach," said Leyva.

Counting both internal and external personnel, more than 16,000 people are now dedicated to designing, developing and maintaining software in this new unit. The aim is to "achieve more reuse of the components we build to deliver solutions more quickly and efficiently, while developing global solutions that bring more value to our customers than we could offer in each country separately."

The unit is therefore a new section of the bank's Engineering area, and its reports include the Design and Development teams in all countries where the Group has a presence and the global Development teams. In addition, co-dependencies have been set up with the Global Solutions Architecture and Software Development Transformation units and with BBVA Next Technologies, a Group company that specializes in software engineering, and with Veridas, a leading biometric technology company created by BBVA and das-Nano.