Onur Genç shares his inspiring career journey from Trabzon to becoming the first foreign CEO of Spanish banking giant BBVA, detailing the financial evolution.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency for their international executive interview series, Onur Genç shared the process of becoming the first foreign top executive of the 168-year-old Spanish institution, BBVA. He detailed his career steps stretching from the Çarşıbaşı district of Trabzon to global financial leadership.
Educational Years and Priorities
Born in 1974, the executive stepped into his education life at a village school where his parents taught. After spending his high school years at Trabzon Anatolian High School, he entered the Electrical and Electronics Engineering department at Boğaziçi University. Finishing his department in first place in three and a half years, the executive believes, looking back, that life should be built on a balance.
Arguing that focusing solely on academic success is insufficient, the top executive considers not participating in social activities during university a shortcoming. He mentions that he always advises his own children to be versatile and not to miss out on social life.
Vehbi Koç’s Advice and Career Leap
Deciding to shift to business administration instead of engineering, Onur Genç went to the United States with a scholarship from the Turkish Educational Foundation. His encounter with Vehbi Koç during this process left a mark on his career. When Koç conveyed his expectation that he should also graduate first in his school abroad and return to Turkey, he worked intensely not to disappoint this trust, graduating first from Carnegie Mellon.
After working briefly at Dallas-based American Airlines, he joined the management consulting firm McKinsey. During his 13 years there, he rose to become the company’s first senior Turkish partner globally. However, the intense workload limiting his time with his family led him to take a radical step. Not hesitating to leave a financially lucrative position to establish a work-life balance, he transitioned to Garanti Bank.
Language Barrier and Global Responsibility
His banking experience, which gained momentum in Istanbul, took him to Madrid in 2018. Taking the helm of BBVA, which operates in 30 different countries and serves millions of customers, he initially felt the weight of the massive structure. Rather than making English the management language of the institution to communicate properly with his teammates, he took the initiative and learned Spanish within six months. The executive successfully steered the institution through challenging periods such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes.
The Future of Finance and Advice to the New Generation
Believing in the importance of constantly taking action in business life, the executive states that he frequently questions what the next action step is in meetings, noting this matches the proactive Turkish character.
Touching upon the transformation in banking habits, the senior executive emphasizes that customers who previously did not visit a branch for weeks now log into mobile applications every other day. Therefore, they have increased the budget share allocated to technology investments to 26 percent.
Always advising young professionals to take responsibility, Onur Genç believes that working with the right people is the most critical factor in a career, rather than just finding the right job. Finally, the executive added that Turkey‘s economy is on the right track with its inflation-fighting program and that he fully believes in the country’s economic potential.
