IBM has signed an agreement worth around $700m with Banco Santander to help the Spanish banking giant upgrade and expand its digital capabilities.
Image: IBM signs $700m deal with Santander to accelerate transformation. Photo: courtesy of Dagane/Wikipedia.org.
Under a five-year global technology agreement, IBM will enable the transition of Santander Group towards the open, flexible and modern IT environment.
The agreement will pave way for new efficiencies to the bank’s operations in addition to boosting its capability in delivering innovative services to customers.
Santander is expected to improve its services and applications with IBM’s disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and big data, which will all be backed by security advanced solutions.
By deploying IBM Watson, the Spanish bank is already integrating AI capabilities to enhance customer experience, improve branch advisors expertise and boost employee productivity.
IBM said that the latest agreement consolidates its role as one of the main transformation partners of the banking major. The IT company is offering more solutions and expertise which will essentially support the Spanish bank’s objective of developing the most advanced IT architecture based on a hybrid, multicloud environment.
Santander Global CIO David Chaos said: “This agreement will allow us to have a global partner with the best technology to help accelerate the IT transformation. We think this agreement with IBM represents a great support to our strategy of constant progress, while protecting our investments in technology.
“IBM’s technology will provide the bank with the flexibility needed to support the constantly evolving business of a bank.”
IBM said that it also helping Santander in conforming with the highest level of commercial security as required by the US government for data, applications and services through its security tools.
IBM general manager for Santander Group David Soto said: “Santander Group is leveraging IBM technologies to support their security and regulatory work, and to rapidly develop new services that meet emerging customer demand by tapping into IBM’s unique technology and industry expertise.”
In January, IBM bagged a $260m contract from the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) to enhance the digital development capabilities of the Manila-based bank.
Prior to that, in the same month, IBM signed an eight-year cloud deal with BNP Paribas and a $540m multi-year managed services agreement with Nordea Bank.