BNP Paribas' 2030 priorities: more AI, less offshoring, same buildings
With European Q3 reporting season well under way, mixed results have come through. Three banks have reported this morning: UBS, which didn’t do so well, Deutsche Bank, which did a bit better, and BNP Paribas, which is doing something else entirely.
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BNP’s investor presentation detailed its substantial savings plan over the next three years. Its rather ambitious target – to save €4bn, including €2.4bn in support function spend – was primarily based around five key line items.
The bank intends to save on two primary things: “shoring”, presumably both off- and near-shoring, and “organization simplification” and “renunciation”. That means making cuts. It probably means making a lot of cuts, in fact, given that the bank intends to increase spending – on “process optimization”, which is a bit vague, and on AI, which is rather explicit. To that end, the bank has launched a five-year partnership with Google ‘s Gemini. It has also said that “external spend,” which includes real estate, would remain flat by 2030.
It’s a bold plan. In the firm’s Q2 investor call, CEO Jean-Laurent Bonnafé said that more than 80% of the savings available were “clearly identified”, and a quarter of them should come by Q1 2027. The firm intended to “pool and streamline” its application portfolio, “amplify the use of AI,” and “simplify” the organization. He also said BNP was targeting a 50% cost-income ratio over time, well down from 60% it forecast for 2026. It was 59% in the first half of the year, and 58% in Q3. Perhaps the bank expects costs to increase in Q4.
While BNP hasn’t been having a great year, its Q3 was somewhat better; equities sales & trading revenue was up by 50% on the third quarter of 2025, which was the second-best result of the banks we’ve covered this year, and its fixed income, currencies, and commodities revenue was down just 0.6%, on par with Goldman Sachs and well ahead of Barclays, Bank of America, and the likes.
Investment banking – which includes lending and transaction revenue – is performing a bit better, especially debt capital markets (DCM). The bank noted that its Americas banking revenue was growing by double digits, “particularly DCM, acquisition finance, securitisation and infrastructure finance.” Capital markets were also strong in APAC. Market intelligence firm Dealogic noted that it increased its global banking market share by around 0.1%.
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