Vila Torres says his challenge is to improve profitability in BBVA – The Economist

Each year burst over 1,200 million smart devices and this changes the order of business.

The management raised the importance of working with front-line digital products. Photo: Special

Carlos Torres Vila, new CEO of BBVA, pledged to improve the profitability of the company taking advantage of the new stage of growth that opens with the advent of technology and to the “attack” of new competitors in lending and asset management, among other segments.

Torres explained that the bank faces the challenge of new competitors aimed at different sectors and have developed certain capabilities. “We need to build capacity to ensure long-term success,” he said.

In a conference call with analysts, the new CEO of BBVA defended the new organization of the group, which involves a change in the front line executive of the organization and seeks to accelerate the digital transformation and drive results.

“We want to ensure that they are going to get short-term results”, guaranteed, after emphasizing that the company faces digital changes In order to take advantage of the new growth cycle that is coming in the short term.

In this sense, Torres anticipated that the blue bank will invest a lot to promote the sale of products through the digital channel as an alternative traditional office. The number two of BBVA defined this ability as “critical,” while indicating the importance of software engineering to develop digital products of the line.

Torres explained the changes at the top of BBVA in change from “top to bottom” that is suffering the banking model with the digital revolution. In this regard, he recalled that burst over 1,200 million smart devices a year and predicted more than 50,000 million devices in 2022 will be connected to Internet. “This will change the whole business from top to bottom,” he said.

In his defense of the new digital model initiated by the entity, substitute Ángel Cano amounted to 30% drop in transactions offices suffered on the bench in the last five years. Torres felt that this exponential decay will overlap with an equally exponential growth of mobile banking, which has recorded double-digit increases in the last four years.

Technology Executive for the digital age

Born in Salamanca in 1966, Torres Vila graduated in Electrical Engineering and Business Administration in 1988 at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where two years later he completed an MBA degree at the Sloan School of Management. By then, Torres Vila as he combined his studies with his foray into the labor market as a financial analyst and consultant and, indeed, in 1994 also obtained a degree in law, which coursed through the National University of Distance Education (UNED) .

After becoming a partner at McKinsey & amp; Company, where he worked between 1990 and 2002, Torres Vila was appointed Director of Corporate Development and member of the steering committee of Endesa, where he was appointed CFO in 2007.

After his ephemeral step in the 2008 by the solar company Isofoton, where he was CFO at BBVA landed responsible for strategy and corporate development. That first year was very close to Francisco González, chairman of BBVA, which now becomes a potential relay, being appointed deputy president.