LAST UPDATE: 04/10/2021

Financial education is key to improving communities and helping people and businesses prosper. Santander helped 716,000 people through financial education programmes in 2020.  

At Santander, we believe the right financial education enables people to grow personally and professionally.  That's why we run programmes that help boost financial knowledge. In 2020, we allocated more than three million euros to over 60 financial education initiatives that benefited upwards of 716,000 people in the countries where we operate.

Leading magazine Euromoney named us the world's best bank for financial inclusion in 2021. But we’re not stopping there. We have set a target to financially empower over 10 million people by 2025 through financial education programmes and tools that make it easier to get basic banking services.   

Those initiatives are part of our responsible banking objectives. They also demonstrate our commitment to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Banking, to which we’re a signatory. 

Spreading awareness around the world

The economy affects people of all ages. Money becomes a fact of life from the time we’re born. Young people must get to grips early with the financial concepts they’ll encounter in adult life. That’s why we came up with Finanzas para Mortales (“Finance for Mortals”), an initiative that introduces financial terminology to young people and groups at risk of social exclusion in Spain. 

In the UK, we launched the Scam Avoidance School, which consists of one-day public events to raise awareness among the most vulnerable people (such as the elderly) and teach them how to protect themselves from fraud. In Chile, we offer financial education through online platform Sanodelucas, which teaches how to use financial products correctly. That’s also the aim of the Tuiio, Finanzas de tú a tú (“One-to-one finance”) initiative in Mexico.

In Brazil, we’re running the Programa Escola Brasil (Brazil School Programme), where Santander volunteers teach school children in the cities where we operate about the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. In Argentina, we bring finance to the most vulnerable groups through the “Kit de Educación Financiera Inicial” (Beginner’s Financial Education Kit) initiative.

According to the World Bank, over 1.7 billion people (32% of all adults in the world) have no banking services. To boost awareness, today is World Financial Education Day, an event that spurs us to make sure more people can get banking services and, above all, know how to use them.