In an environment of rising interest rates and without much pressure, for the time being, from the risk of default, the main concern of Spanish bank executives is focused on the challenges of digitization, as can be deduced from the interventions of the main executives at a meeting of the sector organized by IESE and the consulting firm EY, in Madrid.

Especially concerned was José Manuel Campa, president of the Banking Financial Authority (EBA), who assured that Europe has stepped on the accelerator compared to other parts of the world in terms of regulation in the field of digital activities in the financial world. “There has been a substantial change in the message among regulators towards regulation. It is not killing innovation, it is simply making sure that this innovation is used in the right way”, warned José Manuel Campa.

The first materialization of this trend will be seen, according to the president of the EBA, at the end of the year when European banks have a first regulation on cryptoactives that is now in the proposal phase with the regulation called Cryptoactive Markets (MiCA), which It contemplates measures to optimize distributed accounting technology (DLT) and the regulation of virtual assets in the European Union with the aim of protecting users and investors.

Campa recalled that the EBA has been warning of the risks of these products for more than seven years, in which more and more "worrying uses" are being detected and of which "it is not clear what the underlying value is" that they present, although He ruled out that they pose a "financial stability problem".

The European banking regulator also confirmed that it is working on a regulation on the financial activity of technology giants. "That is worrying and there is a legislative proposal to try to supervise big tech, because there is a concentration of risk, of activities, of subcontracting in a few providers, very large," said José Manuel Campa. In the same meeting, shortly before, the CEO of Banco Santander, José Antonio Álvarez, had called for a common regulation for all the players in the sector.

And it is that, as highlighted by Gonzalo Gortázar, CEO of CaixaBank -who shared a panel with the CEO of Google Spain, Fuencisla Clemares-, one of the challenges of the sector is to advance in digitalization managing customer data with maximum privacy to create added value to personalized offers.