Santander Bank is prioritizing automation this year to drive efficiency and digitization, both externally for clients and internally for the bank.

Ken Deveaux, head of global transaction banking at the $90 billion bank, oversees cash management, working capital and liquidity management and outlined for Bank Automation News the opportunities where automation could drive efficiency within each business function. Automation opportunities abound in the realms of B2B payments, paper checks and accounts payable and receivable.

Santander to introduce integrated receivables by July

The pandemic environment has pushed accounts payable automation forward at Santander with an uptick in customer adoption, according to Deveaux. Still, “there’s a lot of paper checks in the world and that’s part of the problem,” he said.

To ease that burden, Santander is planning to introduce integrated receivables, or the consolidation of all incoming payments, both paper and electronic, into one centralized place. That functionality, slated for release in the first half of this year, will help customers streamline the process of reconciling and posting payments directly to the ledger. Deveaux declined to name the fintech with which the bank is developing the integrated receivables product.

Using AI for liquidity management predictability

On the liquidity side, Santander sees opportunities in consolidating data flows from payables and receivables to better predict cash position using AI and machine learning. “It’s not something we offer today; it’s certainly on our roadmap,” Deveaux said. He noted that pre-requisites to adding AI are automating payables, a function that has been offered for a few years at Santander, and adding integrated receivables.

Santander is also looking at how to present data and insights to its customers on the platforms they already use, rather than forcing them back to Santander’s platforms. Strengthening the bank’s integration capabilities will be an important piece of that puzzle, Deveaux said.

Santander has been working to expose customers to APIs, but “we’re still early stage there … and to be honest with you, we don’t have lot of customers that are knocking on our door for that,” Deveaux said. Still, it’s an area where the bank is investing and believes to be the future of integration.