Santander will make AI coaching obligatory for all employees in 2026

Banco Santander will introduce a compulsory synthetic intelligence (AI) coaching programme for all its employees subsequent yr, as a part of its plan to make the expertise a part of its DNA.

The Spanish financial institution is accelerating its use of AI after it made greater than €200m in value financial savings final yr.

In addition to the obligatory AI coaching plan for all workers, which can start subsequent yr and contains educating accountable AI use, the financial institution is providing coaching to its improvement, advertising and front-line employees, together with by workshops and hackathons. The coaching is a part of what the financial institution describes as a “knowledge and AI-first” transformation.

When asserting the programme, the financial institution’s chief knowledge and AI officer Ricardo Martín Manjón stated: “This transformation is on the coronary heart of our imaginative and prescient to change into an AI-native financial institution, the place each determination, course of and interplay is powered by knowledge and clever expertise. It is a technique to modernise and lead the shift towards personalised, agile and environment friendly banking.”

He described progress made utilizing AI on the financial institution final yr, saying that AI copilots now help over 40% of the financial institution’s contact centre interactions. In its house nation Spain, speech analytics processed 10 million voice calls and auto-filled CRM techniques final yr, liberating up greater than 100,000 human work hours yearly.

Manjón stated the financial institution desires to embed AI in its DNA. “We’re reimagining Santander’s operations, grounding each determination in clear, trusted knowledge, automating buyer interactions and infusing each workflow with intelligence,” he stated.

The financial institution plans to embed AI in all the companies – built-in throughout product administration, credit score, advertising, service, operations and different core features. It can put AI on the core of its international platforms and create an AI ecosystem in collaboration with OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and the AI startup neighborhood.

A “new collaboration” with OpenAI will help the financial institution’s work. For instance, OpenAI enabled it to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to round 15,000 employees in Europe and the Americas. The financial institution expects to have rolled it out to 30,000 workers by the top of the yr – about 15% of its complete workforce.

The financial institution desires AI instruments to help human workers in fixing advanced duties. Its use circumstances to date embody copilots with funding technique options, hyper-personalised buyer journeys and AI brokers automating back-office processes. Santander has modular and supplier-agnostic structure which might combine with quite a few massive language fashions (LLMs).

Santander’s determination to make AI coaching obligatory for employees may be certain that the financial institution, not like different European companies, doesn’t fall behind these within the US with regards to utilizing AI at work.

A latest report from Forrester discovered that extra companies within the US than in Europe present common AI coaching to their workers. The analysis additionally confirmed that many decision-makers wrongly assume their organisation has supplied employees formal AI coaching. In different circumstances, AI coaching may not be obligatory or not very efficient.

“For those who ask different workers whether or not they’ve obtained formal AI coaching, the response is 52% within the US and solely 39% in Europe,” the European workers are falling behind US staff on AI abilities report acknowledged.