Banco Santander Brasil is a subsidiary, autonomous of the Group Santander. Santander is a Spanish multination conglomerate, which is Eurozone’s Largent financial group. It has an extensive presence throughout the world including Latin America. The headquarters being at Sao Paulo, the growth has been since its beginning in the year 1982 headed to become the country’s third largest private bank by assets. This was possible partly because of the acquisitions they made 1997 to 2007. It also launched an initial public offering on the São Paulo Stock Exchange.
The operations of the bank was divided into two major sectors, commercials and wholesale. Commercial sector had the retail products and services provided for the individuals and SME companies. The wholesale sector served the large companies and capital market operations. The bank follows its cultural policy of “ contribute for people and business to prosper ” Banco Santander Brasil reputes itself as Brazilians’ partner in their collective journey to a more prosperous and sustainable economy. The bank is not fixed to only focus on the financial matters but it strives to be major partner is the communities well within its reach, while initiating programs and projects which makes life better for Brazilians. It provides centers of culture, entrepreneurship and leisure. Banco Santander Brasil continuously searches for chances to increase its delivery and has announced some remarkable digital innovations to the Brazilian market, such as its AI-powered virtual-assistant GENTE.
Mr. Angel Santodomingo, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice-President, provides an update on the bank’s progress during extraordinary times. He shared that the strategic focus of the company was to accompany the various phases of the consumer journey to search , purchase use or sell a vehicle through the digitizes product and service range. The customers who would want to buy vehicles, get insurance, keep their cars in good running order or sell them safely would have their support. This led to an impressive presence in the auto sector. They launched “Troca com Troco” in partnership with Webmotors, allowing customers to sell their financed cars, finance the purchases of less expensive vehicles and pocket the differences, which yielded very positive results. To add to this Santander Auto, a fully digital insurance company, was the first business in the auto-insurance sector to exceed the $100-million mark in premiums in just one year. By collaborating with Webmotors, they set up movement hubs in the parking areas of selected branches, where customers can interpret or display their vehicles for sale.
He viewed from the start of the pandemic, the most immediate challenge to be the activities they did to preserve the health of the customers and employees without having to compromise the quality of their services and productivity. There were some strict protocols taken at their branches which accelerated the development of solutions provided to the remote workers. He believed that, “Clear and timely communication was the key to execute this move without any disruption in our services.” There was digitization done both in their internal processes as well as in the products and services they offered. The occupancy rates were from 85 to 90 per cent after the transition was made from Work from home scenarios to back to office premises working.
He strongly believes and quoted that, “The society we serve and offer our products and services to is, unequivocally, diverse.’’ To define what he meant, a diverse group of people always make the better decision compared to a homologues one. Therefore, the normalization of the lives of their employers were absolutely necessary. Creating an increasingly diverse and inclusive environment was one of the priorities for building a state-of-the-art company that could quickly adapt to the most conflicting scenarios too was the idea behind their success. He dedicates the bank’s success to the keeping the customers as first priority.
