Aiaz Kazi will work with teams across the Group’s footprint to lead the open financial services platform.

 

Madrid, 4 Mar 2018 - PRESS RELEASE
Santander today announced the appointment of Aiaz Kazi as Chief Platform Officer. Kazi joins Santander from Google to support the bank’s transformation to become an open platform for financial services, reporting directly to Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, Lindsey Argalas.

In this newly created role, Kazi will be responsible for helping the bank evolve the way it delivers products and services to its customers. Santander’s open and collaborative technology strategy is a crucial part of its digital transformation to better meet needs of its 144 million customers.

Kazi will lead the open platform for financial services working with Santander’s global technology division and teams across the bank’s 10 core markets in Europe and the Americas. Santander is already transforming its front-office, so that all product and services are available in digital channels, and its back-office: re-engineering, digitizing and automatizing all processes. Given the bank’s scale and extensive customer and partner base, the bank views evolving into an open global platform as the natural next step.

Kazi was previously head of Platform Ecosystem for Google Cloud, following a long stint at SAP, where he launched, shaped and helped grow SAP HANA to become one of the most successful enterprise platforms. He brings a wealth of experience to the bank in developing cloud platforms, growing developer and partner ecosystems, and driving platform adoption, to the benefit of both customers and technology partners.

Lindsey Argalas, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at Santander, said: “Investing in great people and the best technology allows us to deliver the best possible services to our customers. Through a combination of attracting the best digital talent and opening the bank to the global tech community, we will achieve our vision to be the best open financial services platform in the world.”

Aiaz Kazi, Chief Platform Officer at Santander, said: “I join Santander at a truly exciting moment in its 160-year history. I’m eager to apply my experience to build an open financial services platform business delivering on Santander’s bold vision, and an even bigger opportunity to shape the future of financial services industry transforming the experience of millions of people and businesses.”

Aiaz is based in San Francisco with a global remit. He has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Bombay, India. Kazi is the latest in a string of senior hires from Amazon, Google, Facebook, PayPal and Intuit, complementing bank-experienced entrepreneurial talent from Santander’s local markets.

Banco Santander (SAN SM, STD US, BNC LN) is a leading retail and commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in Europe and the Americas, and is the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization. At the end of 2018, Banco Santander had EUR 981 billion in customer funds (deposits and mutual funds), 144 million customers, 13,000 branches and 200,000 employees. Banco Santander made attributable profit of EUR 7,810 million in 2018, an increase of 18% compared to the previous year.