Banco Santander will introduce a mandatory artificial intelligence (AI) training programme for all its staff next year, as part of its plan to make the technology part of its DNA.

The Spanish bank is accelerating its use of AI after it made more than €200m in cost savings last year.

As well as the mandatory AI training plan for all employees, which will begin next year and includes teaching responsible AI use, the bank is offering training to its development, marketing and front-line staff, including through workshops and hackathons. The training is part of what the bank describes as a “data and AI-first” transformation.

When announcing the programme, the bank’s chief data and AI officer Ricardo Martín Manjón said: “This transformation is at the heart of our vision to become an AI-native bank, where every decision, process and interaction is powered by data and intelligent technology. It’s a strategy to modernise and lead the shift toward personalised, agile and efficient banking.”

He described progress made using AI at the bank last year, saying that AI copilots now support over 40% of the bank’s contact centre interactions. In its home country Spain, speech analytics processed 10 million voice calls and auto-filled CRM systems last year, freeing up more than 100,000 human work hours annually.

Manjón said the bank wants to embed AI in its DNA. “We’re reimagining Santander’s operations, grounding every decision in clean, trusted data, automating customer interactions and infusing every workflow with intelligence,” he said.

The bank plans to embed AI in all the businesses – integrated across product management, credit, marketing, service, operations and other core functions. It will put AI at the core of its global platforms and create an AI ecosystem in collaboration with OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and the AI startup community.

A “new collaboration” with OpenAI will support the bank’s work. For example, OpenAI enabled it to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to around 15,000 staff in Europe and the Americas. The bank expects to have rolled it out to 30,000 employees by the end of the year – about 15% of its total workforce.

The bank wants AI tools to support human employees in solving complex tasks. Its use cases so far include copilots with investment strategy suggestions, hyper-personalised customer journeys and AI agents automating back-office processes. Santander has modular and supplier-agnostic architecture which can integrate with numerous large language models (LLMs).

Santander’s decision to make AI training mandatory for staff could ensure that the bank, unlike other European businesses, doesn’t fall behind those in the US when it comes to using AI at work.

A recent report from Forrester found that more firms in the US than in Europe provide regular AI training to their employees. The research also showed that many decision-makers wrongly assume their organisation has offered staff formal AI training. In other cases, AI training might not be mandatory or not very effective.

“If you ask other employees whether they’ve received formal AI training, the response is 52% in the US and only 39% in Europe,” the European employees are falling behind US workers on AI skills report stated.

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