Banco Santander Restructures Its Digital Services into a Single Unit

As per recent announcement made by Spanish multinational banking service provider Banco Santander, S.A. the firm has created a new business department by restructuring all its digital services in to a single Unit. The bank claimed that the new business unit will be known as Santander Global Platform and was created the reap benefits worth nearly 1 Billion Euro via this restructuring. The move to create this new unit was announced by the bank following release of disappointing financial results for second quarter which saw profits down by 18% on restricting costs and sluggish momentum in UK banking. The bank believes that their digital services will act in highly efficient manner from their IT and operations via shared services across the region.

Banco Santander

Earlier this year, in April the firm made an announcement revealing its plans to spend nearly 20 Billion Euro on digital technology over the course of next four years as part of its efforts to increase efficiency of its digital services. This newly created unit also aims at boosting efficiency effort and is expected help the bank by slashing 1.2 Billion Euro in annual costs via accumulated resources into single unit. Ana Botin, Chairman at Banco Santander claims that their new global digital platform unit will help the bank gain a better handle on returns generated from its digital investments. Ana stated that, “The creation of the Santander Global Platform area aligns our reporting structure with our organization and strategy”.

Ana also mentioned that, “This helps ensure that the group’s talent and scale can be leveraged fully by our high-growth digital and payments businesses, helping us offer the best services to retail customers, merchants and SMEs, while also increasing transparency around our digital investments”. The statement from the bank released along with second quarter earnings stated that digital adoption has continued to steadily accelerate over the first six months this year with nearly 34.8 million customers now using their digital service offerings. On an average, at any given second – nearly 240 clients of the bank are using any of their digital service or platform and this is an increase of nearly 28% over the course of last 12 months. Recently, the Spanish banking giant was also in news for its decision to fight against Andrea Orcel in the court over its decision to cancel its offer for role of CEO to the former UBS group investment chief.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments below.