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Banco Santander is a giant global bank that takes deposits, lends money, and sells financial services to families and businesses.
Banco Santander is one of the world's largest banks, and it makes money the way banks mostly do: it takes in deposits and pays people a little interest, then lends that money out at a higher rate and keeps the difference. It also earns fees from credit cards, insurance, investment funds, and advising companies on deals. It runs some of the biggest consumer lending operations in Europe, and it is one of the largest auto lenders in the United States.
The bank is unusual for a European giant because it grew by buying up local banks in many countries — Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Portugal, Poland, and the United States. That sprawl cuts both ways. Brazil alone is a huge profit engine, and when the Brazilian currency or economy stumbles, Santander feels it. In the UK, its brands include Santander UK and the former Abbey National, and it once owned the infamous Alliance & Leicester — a lender that collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis and was folded into Santander. The bank also took over parts of Royal Bank of Scotland's branch network in the UK, and its US arm, Santander Bank, runs branches on the East Coast. In recent years it has pushed hard into digital banking and consumer credit through its Santander Consumer Finance business, which makes car loans and store credit cards. The messy part: Santander has paid billions in fines and customer refunds over the years, including a major US settlement over subprime auto lending and a UK scandal over how it handled small business loans. Regulators in Europe and the US keep a close watch on its capital and its consumer practices. Those issues are a real cost, but the bank keeps generating enough profit to pay a generous dividend and buy back shares — a sign it has spare cash after funding its lending.
Its biggest competitors are the other global banks that chase the same customers, like HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup, plus strong local rivals in Brazil such as Itaú Unibanco. Santander's edge is scale: it sells the same card, loan, and insurance products across many countries, so it can spread the cost of technology and brand-building over a vast customer base. Its weakness is the same thing — when one big market like Brazil or Argentina goes bad, the whole group feels the pain.
Saved answer · last researched 26 Oct 2026