US-based Santander Bank, which operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spain’s Santander Group, has appointed former Goldman Sachs director Swati Bhatia as its new head of retail banking and transformation.

Santander Bank hires Swati Bhatia (Image: LinkedIn)

Effective immediately, the new hire has been tasked with leading the subsidiary’s consumer and business banking division in the US and, as the bank’s latest statement confirms, “all related digital transformation initiatives”.

With this, the statement adds that Bhatia will lead initiatives focused on “building new capabilities, simplifying existing processes, and enhancing customer experiences while lowering the cost to serve”.

She is to report progress in these arenas directly to Tim Wennes, CEO and US country head of Santander Bank, and Daniel Barriuso, global head of retail and commercial banking and group transformation, leveraging over 25 years of industry experience in attempting to satisfy their joint remit.

Bhatia joins the post directly from Goldman Sachs, where before her most recent role as advisory director, she led the bank’s digital offering Marcus during its assimilation into Goldman Sachs’ wider asset and wealth management division in 2022.

Elsewhere, she also counts the likes of business payments giant Stripe, PayPal and US-based bank Capital One among her previous employers.

Wennes claims Bhatia sports “the right combination of experiences” to appease the demands of her latest appointment, being positioned to “scale the digital platform and grow the business nationally”.

So far, the bank’s US growth strategy has orientated around the accumulation of deposits to fund its parallel auto franchise, driven largely by the enhancement and automation of its digital functions. This has so far resulted in several fintech partnerships, namely with SigFig for investment and advisory solutions, and with DailyPay, to connect its commercial clients with an on-demand pay solution.