BBVA has signed a new five-year tech deal with Cisco to further advance its digital transformation strategy.

The partnership, which builds on an existing relationship between the two companies, will give the Spanish bank access to Cisco’s full software portfolio, including technology and customer experience services.

The bank is the first EMEA-based financial services institution to sign a whole portfolio agreement with Cisco in both Europe and Latin America.

The agreement includes technology across cybersecurity, collaboration, data centres, and networking.

"After eight years of Strategic Partnership working together, BBVA premises and employees worldwide will have access to not only current but future Cisco technological developments,” said José Luis Elechiguerra, global head of engineering, BBVA.

BBVA recently gave hundreds of its staff generative AI (GenAI) training through a new in-house competition.

440 employees from around the world were tested on their ability to interact with a large language model, carrying out tasks such as processing quantitative information, finding anomalies in financial reports, and identifying, scoring and classifying the level of satisfaction of a fictitious customer based on their comments.

The bank also merged three technology firms to create a new company focussed on software development.

It said that the new company would have a more “strategic focus” while offering more career development opportunities for its tech teams.

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