In early 2024, the bank combined its operations in all its markets into five global businesses. It is another step in the Group’s transformation and the final stage of ONE Santander, our common operating model to create a more efficient, profitable and sustainable bank.
Grupo Santander is structured under five global businesses. Our common business and operating model, ONE Santander, enables us to manage the bank in a simpler and more efficient way. This new model also helps the Group achieve profitable growth and better customer service.
These businesses and one global platform — Retail & Commercial Banking, Digital Consumer Bank, Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB), Wealth Management & Insurance and Payments — enable us to leverage our scale and global network to drive profitable growth and create shareholder value.
At Santander, we are making headway with simplifying our operations in a new phase of shareholder value creation. Recently, we completed our nine-year transformation to ONE Santander by bringing together our retail and commercial operations and consumer operations in two new global businesses: Retail & Commercial and Digital Consumer Bank. They join CIB, the first business we managed as a global platform, and Wealth and Payments (PagoNxt and Cards) created after.
This new approach enables us to harness the potential of our business model, leveraging our unique competitive advantages to achieve profitable growth, serve our customers better and simplify our structure. This will help us achieve the strategic targets we announced at our 2023 Investor Day.
Our unique combination of global scale and local leadership (top 3 in loans, deposits and investment funds in most of our markets) creates value for the Group. We nurture relationships between subsidiaries and regions by sharing strengths and technology and commercial know-how.
As part of our transformation in recent years to ONE Santander, we have grouped our operations into these five global businesses:
Retail & Commercial Banking encompasses all our retail (individuals) and commercial banking (SMEs and large corporates) operations. Its purpose is to serve our customers better, boost efficiency and drive value creation and we made significant headway with this transformation in 2023.
In 2024, we are taking steps to implement a common operating model to simplify our product lines – we removed 16% of our products in 2023 – increase customer numbers and boost profitability.
In 2021, we created Digital Consumer Bank, our first foray into global consumer lending. This business brings together our fully digital Openbank platform and Santander Consumer Finance.
In 2024, we’re cementing our leadership in consumer finance in the markets where we operate. The aim is to move towards a global digital operating model and to continue creating flexible-term products (leasing, subscription, etc.) using common platforms.
Corporate & Investment Banking (Santander CIB) was our first global business, created in 2015. It supports corporate and institutional clients through tailored services and value-added wholesale products. Santander CIB includes Markets, Investment Banking (Global Debt Finance and Corporate Finance) and Global Transactional Banking.
In 2024, we’re working to grow returns, deepen our relationship with clients (especially in the US), bolster our knowledge and digitalization, and manage capital proactively.
In 2017, we created Santander Wealth Management & Insurance, which comprises Santander Private Banking, Santander Asset Management and Santander Insurance. The aim was to implement a client service model that leverages the Group’s capacity and scale.
In 2024, we are enhancing client experience, expand into new markets and business lines, create a collaborative network of global operations and franchises, and build on our global platform.
This business encompasses PagoNxt, which houses all of Santander’s payments businesses, and Global Cards, our cards business and platform. It offers digital payment options and global technology solutions for our banks and new customers in the open market.
In 2024, PagoNxt is broadening our innovative payments platform and integrated value-added solutions. We will also expand our global payments platform to all our regions and the open market — as we have done with the Cards business — to enhance customer experience.