BBVA moved from isolated experiments to making artificial intelligence a way of working across the entire bank. How did they do it without losing control or compromising security? Here I explain it to you, with clear numbers and practical lessons you can apply in any team.
How BBVA took AI from pilot to practice
The strategy was simple in concept but disciplined in execution: don’t leave AI as an isolated technical project, but turn it into a core capability of the bank. In the words of their leadership, the idea was to integrate AI into the business strategy, not push it to the side.
Quick, measurable results:
- Initial rollout to 3,000 employees and a fast rise to 11,000.
- About 3 hours saved per employee per week.
- 83% weekly active use among employees.
- Workflow efficiency improvements of more than 80% in tests.
- Over 20,000 Custom GPTs created internally; roughly 4,000 used frequently.
A concrete example: in Peru, an internal assistant cuts query time from 7.5 minutes to 1 minute — a nearly 80% drop in time per query. That’s not theory; it’s time recovered every day.
