OREANDA-NEWS. July 17, 2015. BNP Paribas is partnering simultaneously and at an international level with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. With four members of the Group Executive Committee involved in the initiative, BNP Paribas is establishing strategic management of its presence on digital media, while opening up to new opportunities for cooperation and innovation in terms of communications, marketing and customer relations.

“BNP Paribas already has more than 500 million digital interactions with its clients per year, making it a leading digital player. The worldwide partnerships signed with each of these four global digital leaders, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter, will help us strengthen our relationship with our clients and prospects on these platforms. It will also galvanise our capacity for innovation so we can offer services that are increasingly tailored to meet their needs,” said Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, Director and Chief Executive Officer of BNP Paribas.

The relationship-based model has been revolutionised by mobile devices, which have become the main tool used by banking clients to contact their advisor or manage their accounts. Improving the digital banking experience for clients is therefore a key development priority for BNP Paribas. The company wants to give them both choice and flexibility of use through the new ways of interacting offered by social networks, new mobile services, simplified processes, and more.

These partnerships actively work toward this goal by reinforcing the cooperation between the bank and the four digital giants. This cooperation relies on a global governance which will be built around a shared roadmap. Regular meetings between the initiative’s sponsors at these four companies and at the bank will ensure the partnerships run smoothly. These alliances will speed up the bank’s digital transformation, making it possible to work together to analyse and manage new business opportunities.

The cooperative agreement with Google was signed by Thierry Laborde, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Head of Domestic Markets at BNP Paribas, and Nick Leeder, President of EMEA Business and Operations at Google.

For BNP Paribas, its collaboration with Google is an opportunity to improve the accessibility of our services for the greatest number of people, as well as to adapt our products based on the needs of our clients. This will make it possible for the bank’s teams to improve their understanding of current practices, as well as their technical expertise and command of new communication formats suited to mobile technologies. As such, mobile already accounts for nearly 15% of the Group’s investment with Google.

BNP Paribas was the first bank to launch a customer service on Google+ in 2013. Each year, more than 110 million requests are carried out for BNP Paribas brands. At present, the Group’s YouTube channels have tallied more than 28 million views, with 5 million just for its Cetelem channel in France.

The collaboration agreement with Twitter, is signed by Marie Claire Capobianco, Head of Retail Banking France at BNP Paribas and Jean-Philippe Maheu, Vice President Brands & Agencies Twitter.

This collaboration agreement will support the digitisation of BNP Paribas’ business and open up new horizons, especially in the use of public Twitter data.

Since it launched its first Twitter account in 2009, BNP Paribas has been a pioneer in the use of the platform in France. It was the first French bank to open a dedicated customer service on Twitter, now offering an average response time of 2 minutes.

BNP Paribas also successfully participated in #YourJob on February 24, the first day dedicated to talent recruitment on Twitter, as part of its strategy to recruit young talents.

On top of its day to day community management efforts (@WeAreTennisfr or @WeLoveCinemafr), BNP Paribas has developed new services tailored to the real-time and global nature of Twitter, such as #FilDesExpertsBourse (launched in April 2014) that gathers six finance experts to decipher daily economic and financial news, or the #MaPubIci program, which offers Twitter advertising credits to a selection of French start-ups to raise awareness on their project in France and abroad.

The cooperative agreement with Facebook was signed by Max Jadot, Chief Executive Officer of BNP Paribas Fortis.

This will enable the Group to strengthen its expertise in digital, social and mobile and to benefit from an international communication platform with 1.44 billion active users. This collaboration is a chance to seize social business opportunities by following the lead of subsidiaries such as TEB in Turkey, which uses Facebook for co-creation of campaigns, getting customer insights, sales, acquisition, real time marketing and 7/24 customer service. Facebook is also a fantastic forum for intensifying our audiences’ engagement with the bank’s brand platforms (especially tennis, movies and innovation).

BNP Paribas was the first bank to launch a customer service on Facebook in 2009.

BNP Paribas currently has 3.6 million fans on Facebook. Through We are Tennis, BNP Paribas runs the leading tennis-focused community on Facebook, with 1.1 million fans worldwide.

The cooperative agreement with LinkedIn was signed by Yves Martrenchar, Group Head of Human Resources, and Pierre Berlin, Senior Director of Sales EMEA, Talent Solutions at LinkedIn.

For BNP Paribas, this collaboration with LinkedIn enables the Group to extend beyond LinkedIn Talent Solutions, (which it uses to recruit talent and promote its employer brand) and to accelerate its B2B business by adopting the two other key LinkedIn solutions: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and LinkedIn Sales Solutions. From a marketing standpoint, BNP Paribas will be able to reach and nurture B2B targets and build strong engagement with its clients on LinkedIn’s professional network. From a sales standpoint, the bank will be able to enable its sales teams to leverage ‘social selling’ as a new way to reach prospects and clients. BNP Paribas’ LinkedIn pages have more than 430,000 followers.

These partnerships are part of BNP Paribas’ open innovation ecosystem. Its vision involves relying on a strategy of partnering with all of the stakeholders in the digital world, whether they are giants of the sector, FinTech developers or startups. Although the partnerships signed today mark a major step in accelerating BNP Paribas’ digital transformation, the startup houses have existed since 2012. In addition, last June the bank launched the first international Hackathon to take place in five countries at once.

Technology is central to the Group’s development plan and supports a strong conviction: that digital transformation will be of structural importance to the bank’s future. This has resulted in accelerated investment in this area, and especially in revolutionizing customer relations.  The main challenge is offering customers a digital banking experience with all of the choice and flexibility that implies, while ensuring their transactions and data remain secure.