Last update: 21/10/2024

The technology platform boosts customer experience when banking with Santander and brings significant efficiencies through cutting-edge automation.

1. What is Gravity? 

Gravity is a Santander’s in-house award-winning banking platform and a software. As a platform its Santander’s  core banking cloud technology - Gravity is being implemented worldwide to help the bank become a fully digital company. As a software, it enables the migration of the core banking system from mainframe to the cloud. 

2. Why is Gravity so innovative? 

Gravity is designed to operate in the cloud, offering greater speed, security, and efficiency in processes like data access, analysis, and the rollout of new features, products, and services.

Furthermore, Gravity’s software allows parallel processing, meaning Santander can simultaneously run workloads on its existing core banking mainframe and in the cloud. This solution has permitted the development team to perform real-time testing with no disruption to the bank’s normal business. 

Santander has also reduced energy consumption from its IT infrastructure by 70%, contributing to its responsible banking targets.

Dirk Marzluf, Chief Operating and Technology Officer at Banco Santander, explains Gravity

3. What does this mean for Santander customers? 

By digitizing core banking, Santander can serve customers better and more efficiently. This technology enables easier and real-time access to data, making it possible to deliver new capabilities for customers in hours, instead of days or weeks. It also allows for more frequent app updates. 

Santander is the first major bank in the world to digitize the core banking infrastructure with its own software. It has already migrated more than 90% of its IT to the cloud, creating immediate benefits for customers across Santander’s five global businesses.

4. How are the teams at Santander performing?  

The Gravity system is built upon world-class capabilities of a large team of global IT professionals. Some team members created the original mainframe legacy system 20 years ago and are now moving it to the cloud, complemented by a new generation of young developers and engineers. 

Gravity gives Santander’s 24,000 tech talent, including software developers and engineers, a modern, high-performing environment to create customer-focused applications. It is an exciting technological development that increases the bank’s ability to attract top talent.

5. What does core banking mean in the banking industry? 

It is the most critical part of a bank’s IT infrastructure and is where the main financial transactions such as money transfers, deposits or loans are processed, what is known as the back-end. At the completion of the programme, more than 1 trillion technical executions within Santander’s systems will be managed each year by the Gravity platform.

6. What is next in Santander’s digital transformation? 

As part of Santander’s strategy, the bank is in the middle of a transformation to move its 168 million customers to a common operating model supported by a common tech stack that is utilised across the group's footprint. This project, named One Transformation, is based on common business models and proprietary technology like Gravity. 

One Transformation revolves around creating a common operating and business model for retail and commercial banking that will boost productivity, cut service costs and empower staff to improve customer experience. It will enable in-branch teams to dedicate more time to customers and offer them the personal service they demand across all channels – whether via app, contact center, or branch, no matter where they are located.

Santander’s launch of Openbank in the US marks a significant milestone in the group’s transformation as it becomes the first country in which Santander is combining its core banking infrastructure, Gravity, with an intuitive customer interface called ODS.

7 How has Google used Gravity? 

Google announced, in October 2022, that it would be commercializing a service to help other companies transition from mainframes to the cloud. Google’s product, called Dual Run, was built on top of the unique Gravity software technology developed by Santander.