Santander is committed to lifelong learning, to provide greater personal and professional value.

Santander invested 1.2 million euros in 2024 in financial support grants for young university students.

Lisbon, 17 December, 2024.
Through the Santander Portugal Foundation, in recent years the bank has increased its investment in training people in Portugal with the aim of contributing to lifelong learning. This enables interested parties to upskill in line with the challenges of "new" jobs.

In 2024, 100,000 Portuguese people had free access to training courses, scholarships and other types of content that were made available on the Santander Open Academy platform. The most sought-after courses are digital skills, the English language and artificial intelligence, as a reflection of the current and future needs of the job market. There are many other courses available, such as codeless programming, leadership and corporate sustainability.

On a quarterly basis, the Online Job Radar program publishes the skills that are most requested by employers in Portugal. And if some are obvious, others are less so: "Such as understanding how to work in a team, communicating - not only in Portuguese, but also in English - the skills most sought after by recruiters" in the 3rd quarter of 2024. And "at least one soft skill is among the top 5 most sought-after skills in all types of professions", which is exemplified by "teamwork and leadership". When filtering the professions that have the most offers published online, "sales representative" and "software programmer" appear.

In a constantly changing world, it's essential to keep up with the market and continuously develop and improve knowledge and skills. As early as possible. At the same time, Santander continues to support young university students in completing and/or taking part in higher education, and participating in exchange programmes.

This year, the Santander Foundation invested more than 1.2 million euros in financial support grants, benefiting 1,700 students. These students gain greater stability in their studies and benefit from all the possibilities that academic life, including Erasmus, has to offer. Preventing students from dropping out of higher education is a priority, to enhance the development of skills and aid preparation for the job market. These programmes are also available at the Santander Open Academy.

Inês Rocha de Gouveia, head of Santander Universities and a member of the board of the Santander Portugal Foundation, states "in order to achieve a better life and build our desired future, we need to constantly learn and refresh our knowledge. The Santander Portugal Foundation invests in education at all stages of learning – at school, at universities and throughout life – by offering unique training courses that increase employability. This helps us contribute to making Portugal more innovative, competitive and, as a consequence, with improved overall well-being".

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