During the Global SME Finance Forum 2018, José González-Páramo, Executive Board Director for BBVA, shares why BBVA is focusing their activities around SMEs and the changes happening within supply and demand.
Páramo shared, “Bank funding is the main source of external financing for SMEs. We focus on what makes it difficult for them [SMEs] to access finance, in particular non-standardized information they produce. We are entirely focused on SMEs.”
Páramo says that ‘New competitors in the SME Finance space make banks better’ and that BBVA learns a lot from competing with and working with fintechs and alternative financers. He says BBVA also finds the best talent to fertilize their industry intelligence and figure out ways to create value.
Furthermore, he elaborated on BBVA keeping up with new technologies and changes within supply and demand. “As a new client, millennials demand a new experience, seamless [and] compatible to any internet experience. [There] [is] big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other things available to companies that now enter the market without the legacies that we are operating with, so supply is also changing. If you put the client at the center, it’s time to move. This is why we started early, investing in ideas, platforms and changing the organization of the bank, talent and culture.
More than 600 attendees represented 208 institutions and 80 countries at the Forum. See event highlights, testimonials, other expert interviews, 13 TechPitches, session presentations and a recap of the Study Tour to 12 innovative financial institutions on the event website: https://globalsmefinanceforum.org/2018/