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Professional Services

Banking giant Santander reports record profit, plans massive shareholder returns

The banking giant reported a slight increase in its cost base—operating expenses expanded by two per cent for the year.

Santander has reported its results for 2024

Santander, the Spanish banking behemoth, has today unveiled impressive figures for 2024, driven by increased income from its retail banking sector and reduced costs.

The group posted a profit of €12.5bn (£10.4bn), a 14 per cent increase, and an eight per cent revenue growth to €62.2bn, as reported by .

The bank's return on tangible equity, a crucial indicator of banking profitability, climbed from 15.1 per cent to 16.3 per cent over the year.

Santander reported expansion across the board, with customer numbers swelling by eight million to a total of 173m.

Both net interest income and net fee income grew by eight per cent. Despite a slight rise in its cost base, with operating expenses growing by two per cent over the year, this was counterbalanced by higher income.

Consequently, the lender's overall efficiency ratio significantly improved to a 15-year record, dropping 2.3 percentage points to 41.8 per cent.

Santander attributed this performance to the group's "ongoing transformation...with the replacement of legacy technology with shared global technology platforms, such as Santander’s cloud-based core banking platform Gravity, which has helped the bank achieve savings of €452m since December 2022."

Based on these better-than-expected results, the bank announced plans to return €10bn of additional capital to shareholders through share buybacks over the next two years, in addition to its regular dividends.