Santander has spent four years catching up with local and regional rivals that were quicker to adapt to mobile banking. In 2017 it saw itself as the leading bank in Spain but found its app ranked 13th in the country. The bank’s leaders, under executive chairman Ana Botín, realized they had to transform Santander and give key senior executives specific responsibility.
A key moment came a year ago when the bank released its new app, 100% digital but integrating the human touch. For example, every customer can connect directly with their remote digital manager using video, chat or call.
“It changes everything,” says Luis Colorado, head of digital banking and innovation, Spain. “It’s really customer centric, in the last 12 months we’ve captured 1.2 million insights from customers that allowed us to improve and develop releases very fast based on real customer needs.
“We’ve developed features such as Financial Agenda and Piggy Banks to help users anticipate their good financial decisions; payments geolocation to consult the map of card purchases or configure preferences on each trip; and Santander Key, that takes advantage of advanced biometric technology to sign operations in a safe and agile way with no more OTPs [one-time passwords] or passwords.”
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