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Santander extends staff access to AI as first quarter delivers €35m value

Spanish bank expects artificial intelligence use to add €200m in value this year through cost savings and extra revenues

Karl Flinders
By
Published: 22 Jun 2026 12:30

Santander is extending access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to all of its staff across the globe following the generation of €35m in business value in the first three months of the year.

The Spanish bank will extend access to AI tools from 40,000 to all of its 185,000 global staff.

According to Ricardo Manjón, chief data and AI officer at Santander, “this means using AI in everyday productivity tools to prepare analysis, find information faster, summarise documents, improve customer conversations or simplify internal processes”.

But he said access is only the starting point. “Through training, practical guidance and communities of learning, employees can share examples, build confidence and accelerate adoption across markets and functions,” Manjón wrote in a blog post.

At an investor event in February, Santander presented its 2026-28 plan to use AI to deliver €1bn in business value, through cost-cutting and revenue growth.

Manjón said €35m of this was achieved in the first three months of this year, and that the bank expects to reach €200m by the end of the financial year.

“The logic is simple: focus on fewer things that can truly move the needle, measure their impact and scale what works across the group,” he wrote.

Voice channels

For cost cutting and automation Santander also has than 280 process agents in use.

In the UK, the bank is rolling out AI in its voice channels. Through this, it wants about 240,000 calls, 40% of its annual total, resolved through self-service. It estimates that it will save service teams 45,000 hours, enabling them to focus on more complex needs.

Santander uses multiple AI tools from various suppliers. For example, Microsoft Copilot is used in everyday productivity for employees, but for more “specialised capabilities”, it is using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and AI from startups and other technology partners.

Manjón said developments are being done “within clear ethical, legal, cyber security and risk frameworks”.

“We do not share customer data externally to train third-party models, and AI-enabled processes operate within secure environments,” he said.

Separately, Lloyds Bank’s Financial institutions sentiment survey found that 93% ranked AI as the most impactful tech of the next five years.

Also this month, HSBC announced plans to create more than 200 AI use cases across its business, and expects to make hundreds of millions of pounds in revenue and efficiency gains as a result.

The bank already has around 600 applications running on the Google Cloud service, but the new arrangement will see more than 200 AI use cases added in the next two years. It said it will prioritise the highest-value initiatives, where estimated value exceeds $100m.

As part of the agreement, HSBC will harness the skills of Google Cloud and Google DeepMind engineers, gaining access to Google’s agentic AI capabilities. Areas initially being focused on include highly personalising customer experience through AI, using the technology to manage financial crime risk and expanding the reach of an AI agent used by staff.

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