Santander Bank predicts its $12 billion acquisition of Webster Bank will provide it with additional synergies of more than $800 million through 2028 and result in a savings of $280 million in technology costs. 

“We will be a top-10 national retail and commercial bank by assets in the U.S., and again, our U.S. deposit franchise, together with Webster, becomes more stable and diversified,” Executive Chair Ana Botin said today during the $2.16 trillion bank’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

“The technology integrations, we estimate, will be [save] somewhere around $280 million,” Botin said of the acquisition of the $83 billion Webster, which was announced Feb. 3. “On the commercial [banking] side, we’re basically going to shut down our systems and go onto theirs. … It’s going to go into Fiserv.” 

Moving to Fiserv for its U.S.-based commercial operations will allow Santander to provide its white label banking solution, Openbank, to a wider set of businesses, Botín said, adding that it will slightly delay the Openbank launch nationally. Telecom giant Verizon is one of the early adopters of Santander’s Openbank platform, which serves over 2 million customers in the European Union. 

Among the top 25 U.S. banks, the combined Santander U.S. franchise will be in the top 3 in cost efficiency and in the top five in profitability by 2028, Botín said. 

Other tech-related savings 

Madrid-based Santander has seen efficiency gains and cost savings from its multiyear restructuring plan, called ONE Transformation, according to its earnings presentation. The program, which launched in December 2022, has the bank working with tech providers that have a global footprint, such as Google, to reduce vendor costs and provide consistency of user experience internally and externally.  

In Q4, the bank reported:  

• Savings of 90 million euros ($106 million) through ONE Transformation; 

• An efficiency ratio of 40.9% in Q4 2025, compared to 45.8% at the start of 2023; 

• Tech expense of $576 million, down 14% YoY; and 

• Revenue of $19 billion, up 0.5% YoY. 

“The key driver of this was One Transformation, driven by simplification and automation,” Hector Grisi, chief executive, said during the earnings call. The bank reported active customers grew by 2% to over 178 million while cost to serve a customer dropped by 4% in 2025 due to tech restructuring. 

Santander has deployed AI to make operations more efficient for the past few years and has reported more than 60 use cases, including: 

• Automated screening in legal operations; 

• Virtual agents for employees; 

• Information retrieval; 

• Software development; and 

• Content generation. 

“AI matters, but machine learning and much more traditional data-based analysis is still a huge opportunity,” Botin said.  “It is allowing us to do more with less revenue and less with cost.”

AI has an impact, but “we are still not and many other are not able to measure that precisely,” Botin said.

The bank aims to deploy the tech at scale where it makes a fit in the operations and with Webster acquisition, Santander’s scale has increased significantly in the U.S.

Santander also plans to trim its branch footprint in United States, believing that the two banks “have very significant duplication in headquarters in Boston, Dallas, New York and Connecticut,” Botín said. “Headquarters efficiencies and branch optimization will reduce $480 million in cost” through 2028. 

MARKET REACTION: Santander Bank shares [NYSE: SAN] were down 1.6% and were trading at $12.43 at market close today. 

Editor’s note: All amounts have been converted to U.S. dollars. 

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