BBVA’s private banking
segment had an outstanding growth in Andalusia in 2020, of 4.5%, as confirmed to this newspaper by Antonio Garcia Preciados , director of Private Banking of BBVA’s southern territory, who in addition to the Andalusian community also includes Extremadura, Ceuta and Melilla.
Garcia Preciados acknowledges that the bank is “very satisfied with the evolution of the Private Banking business in 2020, despite the fact that the year was marked, like all economic activity, by the pandemic and the volatility and uncertainty” generated by the health alert and the restrictions it has imposed.
BBVA’s private banking business in Spain managed assets of 77,058 million euros at the end of 2020, after growing by 3.8%. These data show that the growth of this segment was greater in Andalusia, where the bank manages 4,880 million euros and has 4,684 private banking clients .
BBVA attributes this significant growth, according to Garcia Preciados, to the private banking business model that it implemented four years ago, in 2016. Its priority is that the bankers – there are 43 in Andalusia – who serve these high net worth individuals are “very close to of customers”, something that has been possible in these months of confinement and restrictions thanks to the digital capabilities of the bank. This model offers both advisory and discretionary management portfolios. “We have reached a historical maximum in these investment portfolios of 25,500 million euros throughout the bank,” explained the manager.
Within these portfolios, BBVA is committed to two big bets: megatrends and alternative investments, which have been well received by customers.
Looking ahead to 2021, BBVA Banca Privada sets itself the challenge of continuing to grow, with a commitment to sustainable investments, expanding the service to more customers, continuing to be leaders in high net worth and strengthening digital capabilities for both customers and bankers.
In macroeconomic terms, BBVA expects 2021 to be a year of clear economic recovery, after the strong contraction caused by the pandemic in 2020. Rafael Domenech, head of Economic Analysis of the bank’s research service, BBVA Research, points out that uncertainties will remain in the first half of the year, although “in the race for vaccines against Covid-19 infections”, the immunization of the population. “That recovery is going to go from less to more, clearly,” says Domenech, who points to the stimulus to the economy that fiscal policies will entail, both in the US, with the plans of the new president Joe Biden, and in Europe. “In the particular case of Spain, the combination of some new expansive General State Budgets with the Next Generation EU funds are going to be incentive policies,” emphasizes the also professor of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis at the University of Valencia, who foresees that Spain grow 5.5% in 2021.
For his part, Enrique Marazuela , investment director of BBVA Spain’s Private Banking, emphasized that among the different proposals for their clients, they discourage the renewal of public debt, not because of a question of solvency but of profitability.
