BCP: Taking banking to new heights on a digital rocketship

Leaders at BCP speak of its goal for digital transformation as going to “Planet ExEf” (for experience and efficiency), with new capabilities (digital journeys, data & analytics, cyber risk, etc.) as the enabling engines. BCP brought in McKinsey to help map out and implement a digital transformation using new techniques and approaches, technology modernization, data and advanced analytics, and digital tools that are changing the way people work throughout the bank and the way customers interact with BCP.

From the beginning, BCP’s focus on its twin goals of experience and efficiency never wavered. McKinsey helped BCP identify six priority “plays” to focus on: digital onboarding, digital payments, analytics to drive insights, and overall customer experience, from queries and complaints to credit evaluations for small business clients. Throughout this journey, BCP continually raised the bar on its aspirations.

“Governing a digital company is different than governing a traditional company in terms of budgeting, empowerment, decision making process. And this has a lot to do with leadership and culture.”
—Francesca Raffo, Chief Transformation Officer and Deputy CEO

As it began to digitize journeys, BCP saw that new capabilities alone were not enough; it needed to re-engineer its culture. BCP created the concept of Samay, a Quechua word for soul, which refers to the new culture leaders hoped to create. Today, some 4000 employees—almost everyone outside of the salesforce—works in agile teams, making BCP feel more like a startup than a bank with more than a century of history.

BCP’s transformation has helped it see market opportunities and customers in new ways. For example, as an emerging economy, Peru has a big portion of its population that is unbanked and operating in a cash only economy. With McKinsey support including designers, architects and strategy consultants, BCP built and launched Yape, a digital-payment mobile app, to improve financial inclusion. More than 11 million users have downloaded the app to date and more than two million have opened their first bank accounts on the app. Today, Yape is the third most-used app in Peru, behind only WhatsApp and Facebook, and BCP has plans to turn it into a super app by expanding it to other daily activities.