Building sustainable and connected cities for the next generations.

Today, more than 50% of the world’s population live in cities. This figure is expected to rise to 70% by 2050. Given their very high urban population growth, cities face many issues such as transportation, treatment of water and waste, offices, housing.

Financial institutions have always been essential to how cities have grown and developed, and how citizens have experienced it. Now, as citizens’ expectations are evolving towards more sustainability, empowerment, connection, security and clean mobility, our role as a financial group is even more crucial.  

Our goal is to support the development of those “smart” cities, meaning sustainable, safe, connected, cost-efficient, citizen-centric, clean and desirable. A huge challenge, which I strongly believe will only be met thanks to the right combination of many transforming initiatives, not only from our Group, but also other big corporates, startups, associations, governments and individuals. 

Within BNP Paribas, many entities are already engaged on this path. BNP Paribas Real Estate, for instance, has been creating “Smart buildings” since 2000 (based essentially on energetic efficiency) and is now working on “Responsive buildings” integrating a customer experience approach for each individual comfort. Issy Preference (Paris suburb) launched in 2017, is a good example: 60 fully connected apartments, manageable via smartphone, using Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon) and Google Assistant. Our IoT strategy (Internet of Things) is in fact core to this new offer, and we expect to develop 500 additional connected homes by the end of 2019. 

As I am convinced that open innovation is a key driver of transformation, we are also supporting several startups within the new Plug and Play Smart cities program. We already partner with this global accelerator with Fintechs and Insurtechs since 2017, and this program around smart cities reinforces our long-term commitment to startups. Among them, Havr develops digital keys called BrightLocks to easily open and share access to closed spaces; Giraffe 360 changes the way we sell properties by proposing high resolution virtual floor tour; and Envio Systems, enables the various buildings’ systems to communicate, to gather the right data and manage the building more efficiently. 

Providing new mobility solutions to customers, in line with their expectations, has also become a real stake. Arval, our full service vehicle leasing business, has launched a leasing offer for individual clients within our retail banking networks in France and Italy, with the goal to expand it to other European countries. In addition, the Arval’s Electric Vehicle offer, available in 12 countries (such as France, UK, Germany, Norway …) covers the whole Electric Vehicle ecosystem, including home and workplace charging point installation, integrated payment solutions and digital services. It allows trial periods and additional services, including a petrol/diesel vehicle replacement option for short periods such as holidays, to better fit our clients’ needs. Likewise, our partnership between BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Opel/Vauxhall is now offering electrical cars, and the Ucar2Share initiative enables customers to finance their electric cars through a new car-sharing system.

As a major financial Group, we owe to support all our clients in this new lifestyle upheaval and meet their new and evolving expectations. That’s why we will continue working on smart cities, in order to stay one step ahead of this journey towards a sustainable city and the mobility of the future.