BBVA Frontline Staff Build Their Own AI Copilots, Cutting Contact Centre Handling Times by Over 15%
BBVA Frontline Staff Build Their Own AI Copilots, Cutting Contact Centre Handling Times by Over 15% #
BBVA’s in-house generative AI copilots are cutting the average time needed to handle the most common customer enquiries by more than 15% at the contact centres of its fully digital banking operations in Italy and Germany, the bank announced.
The two AI assistants were developed by the contact centre teams themselves, the same staff who use them daily, rather than being centrally commissioned or sourced from an external technology vendor. BBVA says the approach reflects its ambition to distribute AI capability across the organisation rather than concentrate it within specialist functions.
The tools work alongside human agents rather than replacing them. Their main function is to speed up information retrieval and streamline response preparation when customers call with questions about products, services, or standard banking procedures, leaving agents more time for complex or sensitive cases.
BBVA Italy and BBVA Germany are the group’s two fully digital banks in Europe. BBVA Italy launched in 2021; BBVA Germany joined in June 2025. Both run on a digital platform originally built in Spain that now underpins the bank’s expansion across Europe.
The deployment is part of BBVA’s group-wide AI strategy, known internally as “The Eight,” a roadmap covering customer-facing services, risk management, process automation, and employee productivity. The bank has previously reported roughly an 80% reduction in query-handling time for one assistant now used by more than 3,000 employees in Peru.
The Italy and Germany results were produced by frontline operational teams working within BBVA’s AI development frameworks. The bank has publicly committed to building AI capability broadly across its workforce rather than limiting it to technology specialists.
BBVA has not disclosed the underlying model architecture powering the two assistants or said whether the tools are planned for expansion to other markets.
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