Bringing skilled interims into Santander for high profile projects

The Situation

Santander UK plc, part of the Santander Group, is a leading financial services provider in the UK, offering a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services.

Santander UK plc uses interim managers for different reasons and in a variety of ways. The bank may need to bring in specialist or very technical skills for projects involving change, compliance or risk management. A times interims are required for gap management, particularly to fill senior level vacancies, or to cover situations where  a new hire is serving a long notice period.

The Solution

Marcus Lee, Head of Resourcing at Santander UK explains further: “Interims are ideal for short term projects that require the rapid deployment of resources and a quick return on investment. The landscape in banking has been volatile of late and banks have had to improve in a number of areas, particularly risk and compliance. We have seen new resourcing gaps emerge and brought in interims with very specialist skills to address these gaps.”

Santander recently sought Russam’s expertise in recruiting interims for ‘Project Rainbow’ – a major initiative that would have seen Santander acquire parts of the RBS business had it gone ahead.

Rainbow was a complex project with challenging timescales. It required people with specific expertise to complement and supplement the bank’s existing skill set. Santander hired interims to help it make good technical decisions and manage communications internally and externally.

Results

One such interim was Sarah Bolton Howard, who joined Santander as interim head of brand development. Sarah was responsible for the development of the Santander brand within the project and led all aspects of the customer journey including all the branding, marketing and communications. She was a key member of the executive cross functional project team.

Marcus Lee concludes, “Banking is still undergoing major changes, with greater expectations from regulators and customers. We have to have the right processes in place to ensure we can provide a service that is simple, personal and fair, whilst continuously looking to evolve. We will need to bring in experts to help us.”