Santander

The overview

Santander UK is part of the much broader Santander Group, which has bases around the world covering different areas of global finance.

Most of Santander UK’s 22,000 or so employees work in retail banking, unsurprisingly given the bank’s recent high street acquisitions. Since Santander took over Abbey National in 2004, it has also taken on the businesses of Alliance and Leicester, Bradford and Bingley, and in more recent times several offices of RBS’ retail and commercial banking businesses. It is now not unusual to see several branches of Santander on the same high street, and the bank now has more international branches than any of its competitors.

The impact of the Vickers report is likely to be fairly minimal in Santander's case.

Due to this rapid growth, the bank is now one of the strongest in the market in the UK in terms of revenue. However, it is likely that Santander will not be floated on the London Stock Exchange until 2013, given the rearrangements required in the light of the Vickers report of 2011, which recommended that UK banks should have to separate out retail operations from investment banking. The impact on Santander is likely to be relatively minor compared to other UK banks, as much of Santander UK’s work can be ring-fenced within retail banking already.

Expansion through acquisitions continues to be a key way in which the Santander Group maintains and builds upon its market strength. Poland appears to have been identified as a prime area for expansion. Having already bought Bank Zachodki WBK in 2011, news reports suggest Santander is keeping an eye on Kreydt Bank as well.

In the UK, Santander should take control of 318 branches currently owned by Royal Bank of Scotland by the end of 2012. This should significantly strengthen Santander's position in the UK banking sector. However, this will also impact the company in terms of its over-saturation of high-streets. Some steps have already been taken to remove branches where there are as many as three branches on one street - thus far, without any related redundancies.

Rankings

• Ranked 4 in BrandFinance Banking 500, 2011 (Santander Group)
• Ranked 15 in BrandFinance Global 500, 2011 (Santander Group)
• Ranked 18 in Vault Banking 25 Europe, 2011 (Santander Group)
• Ranked 41 in NewsWeek’s Global 100 Green rankings, 2011 (Santander Group)
• Ranked 59 in Universum’s IDEAL Employer rankings, 2011 (Santander UK)
• Ranked 112 in Guardian UK 300 (Santander UK)
• Named as one of the Top 50 Employers for Women by the Times (Santander UK) 2011 and 2012

Salary and benefits

The majority of schemes begin on £26,000. The exceptions to this are the graduate retail banking programme, which starts on £22,000, and the graduate global banking and markets programme, starting on £30,000.

In terms of paid work experience, successful applicants are usually paid £250p/w over the course of their internship.

Perks

Some benefits, such as cycle-to-work and flexi-time, are not open to new joiners. The overall benefits package includes the following options:

• 25 days holiday minimum, with ability to purchase or sell holiday (5 days)
• Further flexible work options where applicable
• Company share purchasing schemes
• Special rates and discounts on financial products from Santander, as well as other lifestyle and health products
• Life cover and pension plans
• Some company car plans are also available
• Employee Assistance Programme – akin to a counselling service
• Cycle-to-work

Passport to Parenting programme

With new laws coming in regarding paternity leave in 2010, Santander decided to get ahead of the game and give its employees a ‘passport to parenting’ benefits programme. Some of the key factors included are:

• 14 weeks maternity pay, followed by a further 25 weeks at statutory pay
• 2 weeks paid paternity leave
• Shared parental leave – where both parents work for Santander, the final six months of a year-long maternity leave can be swapped to paternity leave for the father instead
• Workplace nursery partnership
• Flexible children’s savings account – £40 credit for each new child born to a Santander employee. Further £20 once the child reaches five, 10 and 15 years of age (or from adoption date). These contributions are only given if the parents still work for Santander
• Confidential health information from Tommy’s, a pregnancy charity

Culture and values

Santander was founded in 1857 when Queen Isabel II of Spain signed a royal degree authorising its incorporation. The bank has always had an international outlook and was initially linked to trade between the port of Santander in northern Spain and South America.

Core elements of Santander’s model are:

• Capital discipline: the bank takes pride in its financial stability.
• Efficiency: particularly when integrating systems and acquired businesses to the Santander standard.
• Global vision: the bank’s strengths are principally in central Europe and South America, but its base in the UK has grown considerably. The brand is also recognised in the US market, which is generally seen as hard to penetrate.
• Quality of credit: a particularly important trait, as the bank’s approach to risk is more conservative than other banks. This helped Santander to emerge from the financial crisis in a relatively strong position.
• Quality of service: customer service is seen as highly important.

Integration of UK branches

Over the last few years Santander’s UK wing has faced the considerable task of bringing together and rebranding a number of well-known high-street acquisitions. While this is a work in progress, some key developments have taken place. For example, branches of Abbey National, which was bought by Santander in 2004, now display the red Santander logo.

Integration tends to be accomplished through technology, particularly through Santander’s Parthenon software. This allows bank staff to identify the various dealings an individual customer has with the bank.

The Red Brick marketing campaign

The Red Brick marketing campaign of 2010 was designed to boost the status of Santander in the minds of the British public. A television advertisement showing staff building bridges with red bricks, supported by an online game (soon turned into a mobile app) asking players to build bridges whilst avoiding obstacles, was created to present a message of stability and togetherness in a difficult financial market. Grandiose displays such as a 45 foot long Formula 1 racing car made of red Lego-esque bricks, flanked by Formula 1 champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, added to the publicity and put Santander in the public eye.

Santander continues to promote an image of unity and solidity by using a single brand marketing approach. This will ultimately be applied to organisations such as Alliance and Leicester, just as has already happened with Abbey National.

A results-driven approach

Santander regards its results-driven approach as encouraged healthy competition between employees that helps them reach their potential. Some commentators believe the bank represents a fusion of two different working cultures: the results-focused, dynamic Spanish approach, and the planning-intensive attitude commonly associated with the UK.

A fusion of two different working cultures: the results-focused, dynamic Spanish approach, and the planning-intensive attitude commonly associated with the UK.

The bank is currently particularly focused on trying to improve its reputation for customer service. It has recently brought its call centres back to the UK from India, providing its UK customers with improved access to customer service. The rising costs of employment and maintenance in the developing Indian market were also a factor. As the customer experience of having call centres in results have been poor (and far from the standards set by Santander’s ‘best in class’ approach that has served them well in their more established markets in Latin America and Spain), the bank is now seeking to improve them.

This results-based attitude also comes across in Santander’s contributions to SMEs, as part of the Project Merlin agreement. In May 2011 Santander revealed that it was on course to hit its own lending targets as part of that agreement, both to British businesses as a whole and additionally to SMEs.

Santander Universities

The previous CEO of Santander UK, António Horta-Osorio, was a fan of positioning the bank alongside higher education. Since Santander’s emergence in the UK market, under his stewardship there are now 45 UK universities that come under the ‘Santander Universities’ banner. The bank tends to focus its recruitment from these institutions as it has certain partnerships with them – for example, sponsorships for postgraduate study or international work experience. Applicants would be wise to check with their careers department whether any scholarships are offered at their institution by Santander.