Santander turns its AI-first strategy into measurable impact and extends AI access to all 185,000 employees

Evidence tier: A1 Evidence type: Auto-discovered official publication Source: Santander Press Room Official publication date: 2026-06-22 Captured: 2026-07-16T20:30:43.186Z

Real impact across the bank

AI is already being applied to real banking processes. Many solutions start in one country, business or function, but are designed to be reused across the group where they can create value. That is one of Santander’s main advantages: local execution, global capabilities and impact at scale.

In operations and risk, process automation is one of the clearest examples of how AI can create value at scale. Santander already has more than 280 process automation agents in production, helping automate manual tasks and support end-to-end workflows across areas such as credit, fraud, Know Your Customer (KYC) and operations. In Brazil, AI is being used in card fraud claims, making the process around 95% faster, with up to 90% automation and an error rate below 1%.

In customer service, AI is making interactions simpler and more natural. In the UK, the bank is beginning to roll out AI within its voice channels to support card-related queries. The target is around 240,000 calls (40% of annual volume) resolved through self-service, saving customers around 26,000 hours and giving service teams around 45,000 hours back to focus on more complex needs. This capability is also being applied in Santander and Openbank in Spain, with interactions designed to feel natural and simple for customers.

AI is also helping Santander bring more information into the customer relationship earlier. In Spain, machine learning and real-time data are being used at onboarding to assess whether a new customer may be eligible for a credit card from day one. The aim is to make the process more timely and relevant for customers.

Across financial crime, technology, finance and commercial activity, the same pattern is visible: AI is helping accelerate analysis and support more relevant interactions. Openbank’s AI models process approximately 100,000 anti-money laundering alerts per year. Investigations that used to take hours can now be completed in minutes. In May 2026, over 17,000 people were already working with agentic AI in software development, and 40% of all code in June was developed by AI.

AI as a growth engine

AI is not only about efficiency. It is also opening new opportunities for growth.

In payments, Getnet is using AI to improve the experience for international customers and merchants, including when customers pay by card abroad and may prefer to pay in their home currency. This can improve the customer experience, help merchants increase conversion and support more advanced payment services for cross-border commerce.

This points to a broader shift: agentic commerce. As AI agents begin to help customers search, compare and buy, payments will need to adapt to journeys that are increasingly assisted, and eventually initiated, by AI. Santander was the first bank in Europe to test payments with AI agents with Mastercard, and the first in Latin America to do so with Visa.

AI for all employees

The next step was to make this capability available to everyone. Until now, nearly 40,000 employees were actively using AI tools across the group. Starting today, Santander has extended AI access to all 185,000 employees worldwide.

For many employees, this means using AI in everyday productivity tools to prepare analysis, find information faster, summarize documents, improve customer conversations or simplify internal processes.

Access is only the starting point. Becoming AI-first means helping people embed AI in their day-to-day work: understanding what it can do, where its limits are, how to check outputs and how to apply it responsibly. Through training, practical guidance and communities of learning, employees can share examples, build confidence and accelerate adoption across markets and functions.

But our AI-first strategy goes beyond one tool. Microsoft Copilot supports everyday productivity for employees, including advanced Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences powered by leading AI models. Santander’s broader AI strategy uses a secure, multi-provider approach for more specialized capabilities, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, startups and other technology partners, and G42 on AI-enabled banking solutions.

Scale, trust and strategic direction

Santander already has a clear AI strategy, measurable impact and the scale to turn selected capabilities into group-wide value. We are not starting from theory: AI is already improving processes, supporting our teams and opening new opportunities across the bank.

AI becomes truly powerful when it is progressively embedded in how we serve customers, support analysis, make processes faster and get work done. That is already happening across Santander, within clear ethical, legal, cybersecurity and risk frameworks. We do not share customer data externally to train third-party models, and AI-enabled processes operate within secure environments.

Now the opportunity is to move forward with focus, discipline and ambition. We know where we want to compete, we are proving the impact and we have the scale to make AI part of how Santander delivers for customers every day.