Santander aligns retail & commercial and consumer operating model to its strategy

·      Going forward all the bank's activities across all markets will be consolidated under five global areas: Payments, Corporate & Investment Banking, and Wealth Management & Insurance, and the two new global businesses, Retail & Commercial, and Digital Consumer Bank.

·      This will allow the bank to improve its customer service and simplify its business further, while helping achieve the strategic goals outlined at its Investor Day in February, which remain unchanged.

·    These five areas will become the bank's primary reporting segments from January 2024.

Madrid, 18 September 2023 - PRESS RELEASE

Banco Santander is consolidating its retail & commercial and consumer activities across all markets under two new global businesses: Retail & Commercial and Digital Consumer Bank. The changes align these businesses with Santander's current, global model in Corporate & Investment Banking, Wealth Management & Insurance and Payments, helping the bank achieve the strategic goals outlined at its Investor Day in February, including: adding 40 million customers by 2025, increasing return on tangible equity to 15-17%, and achieving double-digit average annual growth in tangible net asset value per share plus dividend per share through the cycle.

Following the changes, all of the bank's activities will be aligned under five global business areas[1]:

-       Retail & Commercial: a new business area which combines all the bank's retail and business banking globally, to be led by Daniel Barriuso.

-       Digital Consumer Bank: all consumer finance activities worldwide, to be led by José Luis de Mora.

-       Payments: PagoNxt (led by Javier San Félix) and Global Cards (led by Matías Sánchez).

-       Corporate & Investment Banking: already a global business, led by José M. Linares.

-       Wealth Management & Insurance: already a global business, led by Víctor Matarranz.

Santander's executive chair, Ana Botín, said: "Today we are announcing a crucial step in aligning our operating model in retail & commercial and consumer banking to our strategy. We know from our progress since we first defined our strategy in 2015 that leveraging our unique combination of global scale and local leadership allows us to serve customers better, while delivering profitable growth. We are confident this is the right thing for our customers and will allow us to progress faster, delivering on all targets set out at Investor Day this year, including double digit average annual growth in tangible net asset value plus dividend per share through the cycle."

In this new model, global heads will define the common business and operating model, which will be based on global platforms; country heads continue to be responsible for managing the business, and regional heads will drive the implementation of the model and convergence across the markets.

The group plans to align the way it reports its financial results to this new model from January 2024, as it becomes implemented, with the five global businesses becoming the new primary segments for the group. To facilitate year-on-year comparisons and analysis, the bank will publish information adapted to the new segments ahead of 2023 full-year results announcement, which will take place on 31 January 2024. The group will continue to report all country and region-specific data, although they will become secondary segments.

The group's financial targets outlined in February remain unchanged, including achieving a return on tangible equity (RoTE) of 15-17% in 2023-2025 and an efficiency ratio of c.42% by 2025; maintaining a fully-loaded CET1 above 12%; delivering double-digit average annual growth in tangible net asset value (TNAV) per share plus dividend per share through the cycle. The bank remains on track to meet its 2023 targets, including double-digit revenue growth; RoTE above 15%; cost-to-income ratio of 44-45%; fully-loaded CET1 above 12%, and cost of risk below 1.2%.

Bios of global heads¹

Daniel Barriuso (Retail & Commercial) is senior executive vice president, global head of Retail & Commercial Banking and group chief transformation officer at Banco Santander. Before that, he was chief information security officer (CISO) and head of Cyber & Banking Fraud Prevention for nearly seven years at the bank. Daniel has over 29 years' experience across banking, energy and tech industries. Prior to joining Santander, he held various executive positions at BP, Credit Suisse and ABN AMRO.

José Luis de Mora (Digital Consumer Bank) is senior executive vice president, global head of Digital Consumer Bank and group head of Corporate Development and Financial Planning at Banco Santander. He joined the bank in 2003 and has taken part in the group's major acquisitions of financial institutions in Europe and the Americas. Before joining the group, Mr De Mora worked in London at Kleinwort Benson and Merrill Lynch.

Javier San Félix (Payments - PagoNxt) is senior executive vice president at Banco Santander and chief executive officer at PagoNxt. Prior to that, Mr San Félix had been head of Global Payment Services, deputy CEO for Santander UK and responsible for the group's Retail and Commercial Banking division. Previously, he was CEO of Banesto after joining Santander Consumer Finance in 2004. Before Santander, Javier was a senior partner of McKinsey & Company.

Matías Sánchez (Payments - Global Cards) is senior executive vice president and head of Global Cards at Banco Santander since 2022. Prior to that, Mr Sánchez was head of Retail Products Europe and Spain, and spent over eight years in Chile as head of Retail and Digital Banking after a first period as head of Middle Market. Before, he had worked in Banesto for 15 years.

José M. Linares (Corporate & Investment Banking) is senior executive vice president of Banco Santander and global head of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking (Santander CIB) since 2017. Prior to joining Santander, Mr Linares spent more than 17 years at J.P. Morgan in a number of senior roles in New York, Hong Kong and London. His final position there, starting in 2011, was head of Global Corporate Banking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). 

Víctor Matarranz (Wealth Management & Insurance) is senior executive vice president and global head of Wealth Management & Insurance at Banco Santander since 2017, leading Santander Private Banking, Santander Asset Management and Santander Insurance globally. Between 2014 and 2017, he was the head of Group Strategy and of the Executive Chairman's Office and, prior to that, he was the director of Strategy and chief of staff to the CEO in Santander UK. Before joining Santander in early 2012, Mr Matarranz was a partner at McKinsey & Company.

Banco Santander (SAN SM, STD US, BNC LN) is a leading commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in the Europe, North America and South America regions, and is one of the largest banks in the world by market capitalization. Santander aims to be the best open financial services platform providing services to individuals, SMEs, corporates, financial institutions and governments. The bank's purpose is to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way. Santander is building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising €220 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2030. In the first half of 2023, Banco Santander had €1.25 trillion in total funds, 164 million customers, 9,000 branches and 212,000 employees.

Important information

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