IBM and Banco Santander have recently entered into a five-year global technology agreement, valued at $700 million to boost Santander’s digital transformation.
For Santander, the five-year global technology agreement is in-line with the Spanish lender's business transformation program. The company is seeking to move to a more open, flexible and modern IT environment that delivers better and more innovative digital services for its customers.
For IBM, this marks a good start for 2019 as it continues to rack-up a huge $700 million financial services contract, as well as agreements with ICBC Argentina and the card unit of Hyundai and Kia Motors.
Following this deal, Santander is set to use the IBM's A.I., blockchain and big data offerings, which is expected to help in the transition of the of the bank's IT infrastructure into a hybrid and multi-color environment.
The Spanish lender plans to use IBM’s Watson to improve customer experience, enhance branch advisors expertise and increase employee productivity.
As of December 2018, Santander’s funds amounted to 981 billion euros with a customer base of 144 million, spread across 13,000 branches in Europe and Americas.
IBM also announced its new four-year deployment initiative called Code and Response valued at $25 million to put open-source tech developed in coding challenges into communities.