Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011; it is a news item reporting that the first 20 branch closures were expected shortly, with more than 100 in total according to unions and about 300 jobs affected. Emilio Botín, presented as the bank’s current chairman, died in 2014.
If you own Banco Santander shares, congratulations: Emilio Botín‘s cost-cutting plan will translate into lower fixed costs and higher profitability for the bank. Emilio Botín has said he has no plan to close branches, but the first 20 are expected to close shortly and, according to the unions, more than 100 branches in Spain will close in total.
The bank has announced that its staff will be redeployed as collaborating agents (self-employed agents who run an office and sell the bank’s products on its behalf), which now helps us understand the problems that Banco Santander’s existing collaborating agents had been going through.
With this “adjustment plan”, Banco Santander will shed roughly 300 employment contracts, along with the rent and maintenance costs of 100 branches, passing those costs on to its future agents or banking franchisees. They will keep providing the same service for the bank, the difference being that they will pay both their own insurance as self-employed workers (autónomos) and the rent on the bank office.
Emilio Botín certainly knows how to do business.
If you are thinking of becoming a Banco Santander collaborating agent, don’t miss Pros and cons of being a bank’s collaborating agent. Be sure to read the comments from current and former agents, too.
Featured image: Dilma Rousseff from Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
_03.jpg){kind=link}