IBM today announced a five-year, $700 million agreement it reached with Banco Santander that will enable the Madrid, Spain-based bank to “accelerate and deepen” its digital transformation to a more open, flexible institution.

This means Santander is poised to tap into IBM’s AI, blockchain and big data offerings. For instance, the bank will use IBM Watson to improve customer experience, enhance branch advisors expertise and increase employee productivity, the announcement said.

IBM said the agreement strengthens its role as one of Santander’s digital transformation partners, by further supporting the bank’s strategic objective of building “the most advanced IT architecture” of the financial sector.

“The basis of that architecture is the journey towards a hybrid, multicloud environment,” IBM said in its announcement. “To implement Santander’s hybrid cloud strategy, the bank created its own Cloud Competence Center. IBM is collaborating with the center in the definition of the methodologies and processes to accelerate that transformation journey.”

A hybrid cloud is essentially a cloud computing environment using on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services, primarily to increase agility.

Additionally, IBM said, the bank is using technologies like IBM DevOps cloud solutions and IBM API Connect, “aimed to develop, iterate and launch new or upgraded applications and digital services much more rapidly.”

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David Chaos, Santander Global CIO, said in a statement that “IBM’s technology will provide the bank with the flexibility needed to support the constantly evolving business of a bank.”

Santander executives touted several of the bank’s digital efforts during its 4Q18 earnings call earlier this month.

Executive Chair Ana Patricia Botín said Santander doubled its number of digital customers and doubled the number of digital transactions over the previous three years.

“We have much more engaged customers and what’s important, 68% of the engagement from customers comes from the mobile; and finally, we have doubled digital sales,” Botín said, adding 32% of the bank’s sales across the group are now made through digital channels.

She said as the bank thinks about its core banks, it wants to deliver all the products and services of a bank, not just lending, end-to-end, through digital channels.

“So, accelerate execution is the goal,” Botín said. “We will continue to invest in our digital transformation, which delivers a more capital-light model and increased profitability.”

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