All right.
So.
Thanks everyone for joining this session.
Thank you so much.
Thanks.
I understand you are having the Spanish banks one after another.
I was going to say from one Spanish bank to another, or I could have said from one global bank to another.
One global bank to another also, yes. It is a bank that we respect a lot, so it is great to be.
Well, there is a lot of overlap, of course. But obviously, I am very pleased and thank you, Onur, for joining us, Onur Genç, Group CEO of BBVA. I think we can get started if you agree. Maybe a good way to start is to look at overall the outlook for the group. You have delivered a return on tangible equity of 22% in the first half of the year. That is broadly in line and consistent with your ambition to average around 22% over the plan period, 2025 - 2028. At the same time, BBVA has consistently stood out in terms of better growth among European banks. My question is, against this backdrop, how sustainable do you think the combination of profitability, growth, and be able to distribute the shareholder distribution that you committed to distribute?
How sustainable is it, and also how sustainable the distributions or the linkage with the distributions is. That is the question, yeah? Antonio, as always, thank you so much for hosting us, for hosting me. Thank you also for pointing out to the growth dimension because it is true that our return on tangible equity in the first half of the year is now 22.2%. The decimals are even important for us. Every penny counts, as I say in the bank. So the profitability has been at the forefront, and people were talking about it, writing about it, that we are among the largest European banks. We are the most profitable. But the growth dimension, in my humble view, is less noticed or less taken into account, and I do think it is a very important number. You have given the number, but let me repeat that once again.
We have grown our lending book 62% since the end of COVID, since the beginning of 2021, 62%. The average of the 15 largest European banks, excluding us, is 13%. 13% versus 62%. I do think there is a meaningful difference in there as well. Our growth profile is also very noteworthy in my view, beyond the profitability. In short, the question of sustainability, is this sustainable at these levels? Our perspective is yes, and a clear yes for a few reasons. Some of you who follow us really closely, we quote a few factors that in our view, they are hard-to-replicate assets or capabilities that is leading us to this conviction that we will continue sustainably on these levels. What are those? Number one, we are a diversified bank, but we typically operate in low-leverage countries, which is very important. It is like a household.
It is like a company. If you have over-leverage, you face some issues if you take more debt on. In our case, we are in many countries, but when you look into the leverage in those respective countries, they are very low. Mexico is one of the least leveraged countries globally. Even in the emerging countries landscape, it is very low. 35% banking debt over GDP is one of the lowest that you can find out there in the emerging markets landscape. Spain, it is one of the least leveraged now after 15 years of deleveraging within Europe. Low-leverage countries, number one. Number two, wherever we are, we are either number one, number two, or number three. We do not really care about being number one or number two, but we have scale. We have leading enterprises wherever we are.
In our business, mainly a retail banking, commercial banking business, scale really matters. What really matters in our view, still at the moment, is local scale. Being large wherever you are, having the leading enterprises in wherever you are makes a huge difference. Being number one or number six, in my humble view, there is a huge difference between the two. That is the second factor that we have. Low leverage, diversified bank, leading enterprises wherever we are. On top of that, I would add two things that we have been working on really hard in the last 10 years. One is this topic of embracing technology, embracing innovation, embracing digitalization, which is in our view, is a bit differential. Everyone does it, but we do believe it is a bit differential.
It is proven by our numbers in terms of customer acquisition and what percent of our new customers come from pure digital channels. Very different than the rest of the industry. Number four, very basic concept, easier said than done, but we do think our discipline on capital is also very good. At macro decisions, I think we have proven this in our M&A decisions, especially in our sales decisions. We sold Chile, we sold Paraguay. We are now selling Romania, where we have subscale franchises. We are capital-oriented in our macro decisions and in also micro decisions. Every single EUR of capital deployed in lending to clients, marginally speaking, that additional EUR that you put into a client, it has to be profitable, and that discipline is a mantra in our bank. We have also done really well on this one.
Given these four topics, I will repeat, diversified, low leverage, leading enterprises wherever we are. Huge focus on technology and innovation and digitalization and now AI. Then this capital discipline, very basic concept. When you sum them up, our conviction is that we will continue to deliver the best profitability in the European banking sector, then the best growth in the European banking sector. One final thing that you said in terms of sustainability, the sustainability of growth versus shareholder distribution. I am not sure whether you implied it, but some people tell us that there is a clear trade-off between the two.
We do not agree. For a long-term investor, we do think, again, as long as you maintain the condition that marginally speaking, every marginal euro of capital that you put into deployment, that you put into your loans, as long as that marginal euro is productive and capital productive, profitable, there is no conflict. It actually creates a flywheel. You grow, it is profitable, you create more capital from this above your cost of equity, and then with that additional capital, you compensate your shareholders. We were paying EUR 0.31 of dividend in 2021 from 2021 results. Four years ago, five years ago, EUR 0.31. Last year, 2025, we paid EUR 0.92. Three times. This year, hopefully, we will pay much more. So as long as that growth is profitable, there is no trade-off. It is a flywheel, actually.
You grow, you create more capital, you distribute it to your shareholders, you create more growth through this, you invest, and it is a flywheel, positive flywheel, as long as marginally you are profitable.
I think you have framed it very well for everyone to understand. I think it is quite important. Maybe let us go through some of the geographies that sort of contribute to what you just said, starting with Mexico, which is your largest profit contributor. Well, BBVA is the largest financial institution in the country, and you have clearly been benefiting from the nearshoring trend. But if you look at global trade, there has obviously been a significant shift with around a third of global trade now exposed to some degree of uncertainty, while Mexico is also navigating through sort of the USMCA process, which is going to stay with us. Now, what are you seeing on the ground and what is your overview for your market position?
What we see on the ground is a bit uncertainty, obviously, but I would say it is one of the misunderstood parts around Mexico. We are quite positive, and let me be more tangible and numbers-oriented because otherwise it is all concepts and nothing is real. Let me put it into numbers. First of all, before the numbers, I do think this concept of USMCA and the trade relationship between U.S. and Mexico, because Mexico, 85% of the exports go to U.S. and so on, it is very important for Mexico. At the core, at the fundamental level, Mexico will be a beneficiary out of this in any case. Not because U.S. cares about Mexico per se, but for the competitiveness of the U.S., for the competitiveness of the U.S. businesses, at the fundamental level, we are positive. Why?
We quote this number from time to time, and it is analysis and data done by the U.S. administration, U.S. institutions, actually, academic institutions in the U.S. The labor cost in Mexico for an average industry and for an average skill level versus a low-cost state in the U.S., like Indiana, I think was the analysis. It is one-seventh. Seven, one. For the competitiveness of the U.S. industry, it is a major difference. You just cannot deny this fact. For competitiveness, U.S. businesses at least, U.S. economic environment needs Mexico. As a neighbor, U.S. right next to Mexico, the other way around, you need a relatively stable neighbor. Otherwise, there are issues in immigration and many other crime and drugs and so on. So you need a relatively stable neighbor.
At the fundamental level, that is why if you read the U.S. Trade Representative report about USMCA, every single U.S. business who contributed to that report, every single one of them basically claimed that they need Mexico in the mix. As a result, all the supply chains are integrated and so on. At the fundamental level, you just cannot deny the fact that Mexico is needed. What is happening, you ask on the ground what is happening. Another one maybe I share some data. The exports of Mexico to U.S. in the first seven months of this year versus the seven months of last year, January, July, is up 16%. The share of Mexico in the U.S. import market has gone up from 15.6% to be precise, to 17.2%. So Mexico is gaining share and growing very nicely in the exports to U.S.
The average tariff for the Mexican products and goods to U.S. is actually around 4%. As a result of this, it is true that there is uncertainty. There is uncertainty. But it is true that at the real level, when you look into the numbers, actually Mexico is not negatively affected at all from all the dialogue and political situation around tariffs. More importantly, I would claim that in Mexico, the key issue has always been, in the last 10 years, has always been domestic investments, because FDI, even this year, FDI is up 2%, first half of this year versus first half of last year, up 2% FDI, foreign direct investment. But domestic investments has been an issue. On that one, we see some light at the end of the tunnel. It is President Sheinbaum. She is putting the right framework into mix.
They announced this plan called Plan Mexico, which is basically $70 billion, $80 billion of investments every year in the next five years to be done to improve the infrastructure, to improve the energy environment, energy production environment of Mexico, and so on. This concept, this plan, we see that in every single country because we operate in many countries, but it is tangibilizing. We are seeing it in the ground. You might have seen it in the second quarter as part of Plan Mexico, there were tenders, 37 tenders finalized, worth $9 billion of investments to be done by private sector in the energy industry. They have names, now we are working with each one of them to be able to finance those investments. It is becoming real a bit, the domestic investments.
Given all that, we are relatively positive on the macro environment. On top of that, if you add the fact that, again, I mentioned it up front, low leverage, Mexico is one of the lowest leveraged countries, even in the emerging markets landscape, 35% banking debt over GDP when Brazil is 70%. There is so much potential in banking sector growth. Again, in short, if I wrap everything up, the country, obviously there is some uncertainty, but it has not been affected negatively from this latest trade dispute. It is affected actually positively. On top of that, with the positive bias coming from Plan Mexico, we are relatively positive on the environment and on the banking sector.
I guess that is one of the reasons why a lot of players want to have banking license in the country. So staying with Mexico, you make nearly double the ROE of your Mexican bank peers. Whenever that is the case, I think it is natural for the market to wonder to what extent this gap can be sustained going forward with the competitive landscape changing both across banks and with fintechs. What is your view there? We have seen a few fintechs get a banking license. How do you see the competitive landscape in Mexico?
As you say, the competitive environment is changing with a lot of fintechs gaining ground or being very visible, very active in the market. But before that, again, we talked about the environment, which is positive in the previous question. But on this one, I can also say that I have seen many banks in my career, in many geographies, even within the BBVA landscape. I would claim, again, a bit maybe subjective, but I believe I am objective by saying that it is one of the unique franchises that I have ever seen in my life in any country. It has the scale. We have 26% market share. It has what we call transactionality, which is very important for us. You have to be in the cash flow of clients, in any segment, cash flow of clients, to be able to have a better relationship with that customer.
We have more than 40% market share in payroll. We have 35% market share in acquiring. We are over proportionally represented in the cash flow of cash management systems of companies. Amazing franchise. We have the best technological capabilities. If you look into our digital, again, going back to one of our differentiators as a bank, we are one of the best digital players for sure in Mexico in terms of digital capabilities. As a result of that, as we say, we have nearly double return on equity. It has come down a little bit in the last years, mainly because of rates, because when rates are low, that multiple comes down a bit. When rates are high, it goes up. It's mainly because of the rates, but we have the better customer satisfaction than any other player.
As a large player with 26% market share, it's not easy to be by far the best customer satisfaction player in the market, which we are. It's a unique bank. You ask about the competitive environment, and you refer to, I guess, the fintechs, which is true. If you look into the last five years, the change in competitive environment is mainly coming from this new breed of players that we see in the country, which is mainly fintechs. I can say a few things on that one. It's a very competitive environment, but we are competing well. Again, past is not always the best estimate of the future, but that's the only fact that we have on the table.
If you look into our market share, we have been growing market share very nicely, even in the markets, in the segments, in the products that fintechs are competing very aggressively, like in credit cards. We gained market share in the last five years. We gained market share. Fintechs, one of them has now 4% market share. Where are they getting their own share? They are getting it from the smaller players, typically small to mid-size players. But us, we are competing really well. We claim that we are one of the best fintechs in the country. Last year in Mexico, we acquired 4.7 million new customers, 4.7 million. 84% of the customer acquisition in Mexico came from pure digital channels. They didn't go to a branch. They didn't call anyone.
They became, like a fintech, a customer of a bank through pure digital channels, 84%, more than 4 million customers. With these numbers, we are acquiring much more than any other fintech in the country through digital channels, new customers. We compete really well, and we do think we have certain assets that they cannot replicate. The cash infrastructure, we have 15,000 ATMs. Cash is still very relevant in Mexico. We do have the full product set. Fintechs typically pick a certain product, not the whole thing, obviously. We have the best brand score in the country. I can go on and on. But in short, very competitive, a lot of fintechs. We take them really seriously. I have a dashboard on my table. I go every single day to look into that.
One piece of that dashboard is the development of fintechs in Mexico, especially on how they are developing. For every single client that is a BBVA customer, BBVA credit card customer, who we detect also has a separate fintech credit card, we track that customer one by one. If we see a decline in the spending with us, we immediately create a program, a campaign for that customer specifically. We take them really seriously. But so far, it wasn't us who lost position and share. There is some margin erosion, but it's very normal. As long as we continue to do 25% return on equity in the country, we are okay.
That's interesting color on the dashboard. Thanks for sharing. Maybe moving on to Spain, which has been one of the fastest economy once again, this year. You've been gaining share actually with loan growth at 7%, significantly outperforming the market. Similar question to Mexico. Can you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing about business and the competitive landscape, and to what extent these market share gains can come without compromising pricing discipline and cost of risk?
Cost of risk. The competitive environment is very heterogeneous in terms of segments or products. In certain products, or actually in only one product, which is mortgage, which is very price sensitive, as you all know, in banking. Because you only buy a house and the mortgage once or twice, maybe a bit more, but very few times in your lifetime, and you care about the price, you do the research and so on. It's a very price sensitive product, and we see a lot of competition on that one. But beyond that, the competitive environment in our view is in general healthy. But you asked about the market, so maybe I can break it down into different pieces. The country, the macro continues to do really well. In Spain, the latest forecast that we have is going to grow is 2.4% GDP growth this year.
Now we have a positive bias on that because the numbers came even better than what we thought. So we might need to revise it up. The team is working on this. In October, they will be publishing the final forecast that we have. But very positive, 2.4% versus around 1% of Europe. Every single year in the last five, 10 years, this has been the case. Spain grew more than 2% and Europe much less. So we are, among the large economies, we are kind of the star in Europe for a few reasons. Number one, there is a very pro-immigration environment, and there is a very easy integration, especially most of the immigrants come from Latin America, we speak the same language, we share the same culture, and that is creating a bit of a boost to economy, that has been creating a boost.
There is a lot of service-based economy. Spain is a service-based economy, and what we have seen, especially after COVID, is that service-based economies, they grow much better than pure manufacturing-based economies. Tourism, again, this year, we are going to have another record, but beyond tourism, all the service-based economies, all the service components, there are a lot of people. We are blessed with sun. Many people basically work out of Spain to do software engineering for many other global companies, for example. The service-based economies or segments are growing very nicely. Also there has been this investment boost, investment drive for Spain, partially driven by this NextGenerationEU funds. We have received basically EUR 80 billion in three years from Europe to boost the economy, to boost the infrastructure. So there was also an investment component, which was very positive.
When I look into the future, most of these components, in one way or another, will be there. So we still expect the macro to be quite positive. On top of that, the economy grows well, the first part of the puzzle. The banking sector grows even better. For one simple reason, macro is strong, but even beyond that, Spain has deleveraged for 15 years after 2010, 10 years or 13 years, 14 years. Only after 2024, we are seeing some growth. But every other year, we have seen loan balances come down. For the first time, after many, many years, basically the leverage in households, in corporates is now half of what they were in 2010. Now we are much lower leveraged than European averages, EU averages. So there is room also in the banking industry in a positive macro environment to grow.
That's why you might have seen it in the first half. We grew our loan book by 7%. So macro is positive. Banking sector is positive. Then you ask about the competitive environment. In this environment, BBVA has been doing really well. We have been gaining market share, but we were very selective in areas where we do think, again, I go back to the global priorities or global differentiators of BBVA, this capital discipline topic, again, easier said than done, but it's a mantra in BBVA. We have to be getting the worth of the capital deployed. As a result, in the last five years, when you look into what has happened to BBVA, again, proven by numbers, we have grown our enterprise loan market share by 250 basis points. Not easy in banking to gain as much.
We have grown our consumer loan portfolio by 260 basis points, mainly to payroll clients because we are over-represented in payroll. The only place that we lost market share is mortgages, where the competition is. So you ask about growth is coming well, but aren't you compensating, the implication, I guess, was the returns? No, not at all. In the areas where there is no return, we stay back. In the areas where we see return, we push hard. As a result of that, we again have more than 20% return on equity in Spain business. So it's going really well. It's the same story as the global thing as well. We have an amazing franchise in Spain. It's 169-year-old bank. The brand is someone that everyone knows. It's the household name in Spain. We are over-represented in cash flow businesses, as we call them.
We have 14% market share in overall lending, but we have 17% market share in payroll. We have close to 17% market share again in acquiring. We are in the cash flow of clients. We have this entrenched customer relationship. We have an NPS, a customer satisfaction much better than others. It goes back to digital. It goes back to capital discipline. I don't think we are compromising at all the return because, again, marginally, we don't invest our capital in areas that we don't see value.
Very positive on Mexico, quite positive on Spain. Maybe we'll move on to Turkey, which is part of your sort of diversification.
You are looking for a negative area.
I'm not.
Yeah.
But of course, Turkey's back on the radar, and this time is not for good reasons. The direction of travel, at the very least, seemed to have been delayed to some extent. I am referring particularly to inflation expectations, which is what matters for you. Those have moved back up and so have rates. You guided to somewhat around EUR 1 billion net profit this year with a downward bias. More importantly, the market was relying on you coming off hyperinflation accounting by 2028, which of course would be a big deal. Maybe you can talk us through your expectations going forward and the key moving parts for your P&L.
Very well. On hyperinflation accounting, in the second quarter call, we put it on the table basically saying that we do not expect Turkey to come out of hyperinflation in 2028, which was the original assumption in our medium-term plan. If you look into our medium-term plan and targets, it was assuming that Turkey will come out in 2028. Now we expect, as we said in the second quarter call, that that is not going to be the case. We also said in the same call that Turkey might be delivering a bit less. Turkey was never a big part of the plan in any case, as we were saying from the first day on the plan. So it will be slightly negative in the overall plan concept, but we will be doing even better, in our view, than the plan for other reasons, for other parts of the business.
But Turkey, as you said, in the short term at least, is the negative part of the story. I come to this conference actually every year. It is the only one that I come actually every year. Until three years ago, personally and in general as the bank, I am Turkish, so we were very negative on Turkey. Very negative, actually. In the last three years, we are a bit positive for the fact that the team who is managing the economy now is a very good team in our view. They are doing the right things, at least in that sense, as compared to before. So in the long term, we still maintain our positivity, but in the short term, as you say, it is negative. You ask about the moving parts.
We were very clear, and we provided even the sensitivity at the beginning of the year, and in the short term, it turned out to be worse than what we expected. There are basically three macro parameters that defines the P&L and the value creation of Turkey. Three parameters. Number one, inflation. We were expecting at the beginning of the year 25%. Now we are expecting today 30%, so worse. As related to this, we were expecting interest rates to come down to, central bank policy rate to come down to 32%. Now our expectation is 36%. Again, worse than expected. So in the short term, negative. The third parameter is the currency. What happens to currency? It is behaving better than what we have put into our original at-the-beginning-of-the-year forecast, but currency is managed in Turkey, basically, in short, in that sense.
On that one, I wouldn't put a positive thing on the table. The other two parameters, which is very important, inflation, interest rates, they turned out to be worse than what we expected. That's why we said EUR 1 billion originally, then we put a negative bias to this, given this. We even provided the sensitivities on this. Every one percentage point in inflation, every one percentage point extra devaluation creates basically EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million negative impact in BBVA profits. EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million. Every one percentage point higher interest rate creates EUR 40 million impact on the bottom line of BBVA. EUR 40 million. The numbers are very clear. If the macro parameters turn out to be worse than expected, you get penalized from this. That's why with the negative bias.
We compensated for some of these through other means, so that's why EUR 1 billion with a negative bias, somewhere close to EUR 1 billion, but not passing EUR 1 billion, which was the original goal that we had at the beginning of the year. In short, given the macro parameters, short term looks negative, and we would not be getting out of hyperinflation in 2028 as originally expected. In the long term, again, given the fact that it goes back to how you manage this and whether you are sticking with orthodoxy or not, we have confidence in the fact that it is being managed properly in that sense. As a result, for the long term, we are quite positive. For the long term, this hyperinflationary accounting or accounting, so many questions are being asked on this one, Antonio, but I really do think it's not relevant.
What matters is not the accounting, what matters is whether inflation really comes down or not. Hyperinflationary accounting for the P&L, it hurts you, but the hurting is a formula which is an amount multiplied by inflation. If inflation is lower, independent of hyperinflationary accounting is there or not, your negativity will be coming down. If inflation comes down independent of accounting, you would be benefiting from this. What we should be looking into is what year are we getting out of hyperinflation? By the way, this is only for P&L. For capital, it's neutral, as you all know. We should be asking whether Turkey will be reducing its inflation or not the time of hyperinflation. On that one, 2027 we are not very hopeful. It's going to be probably in the high 20s.
We haven't published any forecasts yet, but high 20s inflation, because it's going to be either at the end of 2027 or early 2028, there will be elections. If there are elections, there's always some fiscal loosening. If there is some fiscal loosening, it hurts inflation. So 2027, we are not hopeful. 2028, it might be coming down, again, as long as they continue on this path of doing the right things. When that happens, independent of hyperinflationary accounting, our expectation is that with inflation at teens, we will be delivering more than EUR 2 billion in profits in Turkey, because we have the best bank in the country, in our view.
That's great. Great answer. Thanks for that. We have eight minutes to go. I want to try and open up for questions from the audience. There is a question I want to ask you on technology, which I know is close to your heart, and it's important in your story. Maybe let's test first if there's any questions from the audience. If anyone wants to raise their hands. We've got one here.
Thank you. You talked a lot about your businesses, but they're not really the place where the loan growth is the highest. That's in your rest of business, which has been growing year-on-year by more than 50%, which is an astonishing growth rate. I think perhaps we should hear a bit more about that from you. Is that business sustainable? Doesn't feel that it fits the criteria that you've just outlined. Does it mean that you're up to your eyes in hyperscaler risk?
Okay. As you said, the growth, relatively speaking, is coming from there more than any other thing. But at absolute levels, no. The growth is also coming from the other places. Just to be very specific, we grew 52%, 53% in the rest of business, as you say, but it's a very low base. We grew 10% in Mexico, and it came from a very large base. We grew 7%, 7.4% in Spain, which is the bulk of our loan book in any case. So at the absolute growth levels, it's not that big because the starting base is very low. But we are growing in that business for a very clear reason, which is we want to tag along with our clients in wherever they are. We have seen an opportunity there. We have seen an opportunity. We are a global bank.
We have many clients in Spain who do a lot of business in Spain, in Latin America, in the U.S., and we were not serving them. They were being captured by the U.S. banks in Latin America, and we were like, "No, this cannot be the case." Or there are many Mexican clients who do a lot of business in Latin America, in Argentina, in Colombia, in Peru. We are there, and why were they banking with the U.S. banks in the CIB business? It didn't make sense. We wanted to own that business. As part of that business, when you are in the countries that you were not before in a relatively large way to serve our own clients, there were opportunities in the U.S., in Asia, in the rest of Europe that we wanted to benefit from. But we started publishing this in the second quarter results.
You would see it in the appendix. You would see that our CIB business is number one, is client driven. It is not prop trading or trading driven. You would see that a vast majority of our revenues in that business, in rest of business, comes from clients, number one. Number two, you would see in that page, same page, that 40% of our profits come from Digital Transaction Banking transactions cross-border. It is basically clients, the revenues that we generate from the clients outside of their home country. As a result, we do think that is a natural turf that we can play well and that we can gain, again, better returns. The best proxy of this, again, is the return on capital. Our return on capital in the CIB business is excluding Turkey because Turkey inflates the number to an even better level.
Excluding Turkey, it is 23.4% return on capital, clearly above our cost of equity. As long as we maintain the focus that I just mentioned, those returns are very positive for us, and we will create value. You ask about hyperscalers. As part of that, obviously, you have some exposure to hyperscalers. But we do think you know us quite well. Proven by numbers, it is not a subjective assessment. Proven by numbers, we do have a very conservative risk profile. Our CIB business is conservative risk, follow your clients, and deliver above cost of equity. That is the play there.
Thanks for the question, and thanks for the answer. Any more from the audience? There is one over there.
Thank you. Last week, President Trump mentioned the possibility of the U.S. reaching a bilateral agreement with Mexico. It is not the USMCA, but you think that will be enough to improve the business confidence in the country to start thinking again of lending activity to nearshoring, and what will be the opportunities for corporates and the SME sector?
Very good question. Legally speaking, that is a very remote possibility. USMCA, which is a three-party deal, cannot be converted into two bilateral deals. Cannot be. It has to go through the legal process in the U.S. That is the interpretation of our legal team, and I think shared by the market, that it has to be going through the market, through the Congress, and so on, for that to be a bilateral deal. Cannot happen because the Congress and so on, you will know what is going to happen there and so on.
But what we are seeing is within the three-party deal of USMCA, the treatment of Mexico going forward is going to be a relatively positive one versus what we are seeing between U.S. and Canada. So there can be different treatments. Within the USMCA framework, they can inject things that can make things worse for U.S.-Canada relationship, but better for U.S.-Mexico, which is the base case that we have. A completely new deal, which is going to be giving a preferential treatment to Mexico, is not going to happen. That is not the base case that we have.
Thank you. Technology is going to be a theme for the next few years, the way financial institutions adopt new technologies, and you are a market leader on this. Is any more color you want to share on what BBVA is doing and why BBVA stands out on this important?
As I mentioned, it is one of the things that we thought that we should do better than others. We thought digital at the time was a differentiation play, not a hygiene, not everyone will have it, so there is no differentiation kind of a perspective. Everyone thought that let us follow, let us do the transactions through digital channel, but digital is kind of servicing or whatever. We thought, no, it can be a differentiation channel. It can be a differentiation topic. That is why we claim that we are embracing, in general, technology, innovation, digitalization much better than others. That is why we spend EUR 4.5 billion cash out to technology every single year, which is relatively large as compared to, relatively speaking, to our competitors. And we are going to do the same thing with AI.
We are going to do the same thing with AI because what we are seeing is already it is creating a differentiation. We have 127,000 people working for BBVA. Most of them are client-facing, but every single one of them, including the ones who are facing clients, they can be much more productive, much more effective with AI, number one. Number two, we are a retail and commercial bank. We are basically an accumulation of processes. We do the same thing over and over again for the same customer, for millions of customer. Processes. We have thousands of them. Every single process that we have in the bank can be much more productive, can be much more effective with AI. And the customer interface is going to change big time with AI, as it changed with digital. I give the same example all the time.
We have 81 million customers, and globally, because we are a global bank, except Turkey, basically 81 million customers, they open the same app. It's the same. When they open the app, BBVA in Argentina, in Colombia, in Peru, in Mexico, in Spain, it's the same app. But 81 million customers, they all do different things with the app. Why do we open the same app to them? Why do we not tailor it a bit to what they want to do with the app, with the bank? Why do we still do lots of click? If you want to send money, the basic transaction, you do five clicks. If it's not in your address book, you have to input the IBAN and so on. Click, click, click. Why do we do this? Why can't we talk to our app and get things done?
Banking is going to change, in my view, once again with AI. As we have done in digital, we are going to be a differentiator.
Thank you very much. We could have gone all day talking about this. We don't know. It's a pleasure to have you, and we're very happy that it's your go-to conference every year. So thanks everyone for attending .
Thank you to every one of you.