Ana Botin

David Rubenstein (0:02)

One of the most successful banks in the world is actually based in Spain, but operates all over the world. It's Banco Santander. For four generations, the Botin family has controlled and led Banco Santander and helped build it into a global behemoth in the banking world. I had a chance to sit down with the executive chairman, Ana Botin, to talk about how she's operating in the new world of banking, particularly as artificial intelligence comes into this world.

What is it about Banco Santander that enabled it to grow from a city in Spain to a global bank? What would you say is the single or the two most important things that enable you to be this successful?

Ana Botin (0:41)

We have a culture of constantly reinventing ourselves, of disrupting ourselves. We have always been brave on that side. We were the first to have the automated tellers, the first to build our own core technology back in the 90s, which we then actually got behind, so we're trying to do that in a better way. So reinventing yourself, be willing to disrupt yourself with three things in mind. First is remaining relevant to your customers. So it's not how I see the product, it's how you as a customer see the product. You know, an example is unsecured lending.

It's the same thing as buy now, pay later, but from the customer point of view, it's not the same. So customer point of view, trust, super important, and really staying true to your values. You know, think what comes next.

David Rubenstein (1:32)

You must have observed there are very few women at the top of major commercial banks. Why do you think that is and you think it's changing?

Ana Botin (1:39)

It takes time because, you know, I think women have a bigger issue with speaking up and raising their hand and saying, I can do that job and I can do more.

It's something I've seen for years hasn't changed. A lot of the ways that people get promoted is because they have strong relationships. They go and play golf, they go and do things that are usually men, and so that also doesn't help at all. So we need to be actively helping women because otherwise they don't get the same chance. I think everybody should get the same chance.

David Rubenstein (2:18)

Your last quarter was very strong. You had strong earnings growth. What areas did the growth come from? And what makes you optimistic about the future based on the last quarter?

Ana Botin (2:29)

So our first quarter results were very much on track towards our three-year targets.

We did especially well on our retail bank and especially well in Europe retail. So Spain is growing full-time as fast as the rest of Europe, and that has been a key growth market this year. Mexico is doing really well. It's the kind of country that's growing more this year than last year. But importantly, we did three M&A transactions last year. We sold Poland and we bought into the UK and US. So one of the things that will give Santander, as we've said in the first quarter, a differential increase in return on tangible equity and earnings per share will be the integration of the M&A.

David Rubenstein (3:12)

After the Great Recession, many European banks suffered a bit. American banks suffered, but they came back. And now the American banks tend to be more dominant than the European banks were.

Banco Santander is an exception. But why do you think the European banks haven't played as big a role on the global scene as the American banks have lately?

Ana Botin (3:35)

So that's a great question. And there's no easy answer. It's a number of factors. One is the size of the market. So Europe is not really a single market in services or banking. The US is.

It took us six years to launch our digital bank in Germany. It took us two years to launch Open Bank across the United States. So size of the market, growth. Europe has grown slower than the United States has over the last decade, much slower. And the third factor is regulation and supervision. That's a huge tax on businesses and people and economies. And it has been tougher in Europe than it has in the US.

So a combination of all those things, I think, is what's behind it. I do not think we run banks worse in Europe on the country. I think we run banks in general pretty well.

David Rubenstein (4:22)

Now, you also have a very big presence in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. How did you get to be so big in Brazil? That's not a Spanish speaking country.