BBVA Ventures, the BBVA Group's Silicon Valley-based corporate venture arm, announced last week that it will invest in Radius, a leading provider of sales and marketing intelligence for targeting the small business market.

BBVA's investment in Radius aligns with the Group's commitment to innovation and provides a foundation for BBVA and Radius to work closely together to leverage the Radius technology platform. Since its inception, BBVA Ventures has closely worked with entrepreneurs and venture capital investors to broaden the bank's understanding of emerging trends, helping advance innovative initiatives in banking and finance.

Today, Radius provides key tools and data on small businesses across the United States. BBVA will seek not only to leverage Radius' technology and comprehensive index on small business in the U.S. market, but also to explore strategic opportunities for international expansion of the Radius platform.

"Having worked closely with Radius, we see their technology as a key driver and enabler for enhancing our success with small businesses in the international markets where BBVA is present. BBVA is an active Small Business Lender and our ability to pinpoint and track the success and health of small business relies on the integrity and cleanliness of data available to us, which Radius provides via an innovative set of data on small businesses that allows us the ability to understand our customers better while also discovering new customer opportunities through social insight," said Thomas Whiteaker , executive director, corporate development and strategy at BBVA.

"Having BBVA invest in Radius is a testament to our reach and data integrity. Given the bank's strong leadership in the Small Business space and international presence, they are exactly the kind of partner we look for. It makes sense that they would want to ensure the data they need to make key investment decisions is accurate and up-to-date. Radius does that and more," said Darian Shirazi , founder and CEO of Radius.

Earlier this year BBVA announced the creation of BBVA Ventures, a strategic initiative that will invest $100 million in startups looking to transform the financial services industry. The bank completed its first investment in Silicon Valley in early 2012 in the seed-capital fund and incubator 500 Startups Fund. More recently, BBVA completed investments in SaveUp and Ribbit Capital.

BBVA Group has been investing in innovation and technology for some time in order to anticipate the deep transformation under way in the financial industry. This transformation is already taking place with the development of new digital channels and means of payment that are generating new customer relationship models. Against this backdrop, BBVA's firm commitment to new technologies through enterprises such as BBVA Ventures makes it one of the few banks ready to tackle the changes and compete in the market.

About BBVA
BBVA is a customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857. The Group has a solid position in Spain, it is the largest financial institution in Mexico and it has leading franchises in South America and the Sunbelt Region of the United States. Its diversified business is biased to high-growth markets and it relies on technology as a key sustainable competitive advantage. BBVA ranks among the leading Euro zone banks in terms of ROE and efficiency. Corporate responsibility is at the core of its business model. BBVA fosters financial education and inclusion, and supports scientific research and culture. It operates with the highest integrity, a long-term vision and applies the best practices. The Group is present in the main sustainability indexes.

About Radius
Radius (http://www.radiusintel.com/) is a leading provider of sales and marketing intelligence and allows marketers and sales teams to reach small businesses. Based in San Francisco, the company provides a comprehensive index of insights and data associated with more than 20 million small businesses in the U.S. Radius' technology collects and monitors data from hundreds of thousands of online and social sources. The easy-to-use dashboard allows salespeople to discover new prospects, prioritize leads and synchronize data.