Santander adds ex-Marcus head to lead retail banking and digital push

Santander U.S. has hired the former head of Goldman Sachs' digital brand Marcus to oversee its consumer and business banking business, as well as its digital transformation efforts.

Swati Bhatia is the new head of Santander's retail banking and transformation, the Spanish banking giant's U.S. arm announced this week. She has joined the executive management team of Santander U.S., reporting to both Santander U.S. CEO Tim Wennes and Daniel Barriuso, global head of retail and commercial banking and group transformation.

She succeeds Pierre Habis, who left the company last year and now works at Synchrony Financial.

Bhatia is positioned to play a big role at Santander U.S., whose parent company is in the midst of a three-year growth plan to increase profitability and improve shareholder returns. The multipronged strategy includes building "a digital bank with branches," Banco Santander Executive Chair Ana Botín said last week during the company's annual shareholder meeting.

"We have embarked on a global transformation to become a digital bank with branches, combining the best of a digital bank with our branch network and local presence to best advise and support our customers," Botín said.

Last week, Santander U.S. announced a new branch format in the form of "financial centers" that offer in-person help and digital assistance. Those locations are in five cities, including New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

Executives at Santander U.S. have yet to talk in detail publicly about the company's U.S. digital transformation efforts.

But Wennes said in a press release announcing Bhatia's hiring that Santander "has reached an inflection point as we progress towards becoming a national, digital bank with branches."

Bhatia's "track record of innovation in consumer banking, coupled with a strong background in risk and controls, provides her with the right combination of experiences to scale the digital platform and grow the business nationally," he said.

Santander U.S. is made up of two primary businesses — Santander Consumer USA, which is a large provider of auto financing, and Santander Bank, a retail bank with 410 branches mostly in the Northeast, along with about $75 billion of deposits and approximately 1.8 million customers.

Wennes has said that he and his team have been trying to better align the two businesses.

Earlier this month, the company laid off about 320 U.S.-based employees, or about 2.7% of the workforce, largely in the retail business, Bloomberg reported. At the same time, its parent company has been hiring for technology jobs. In January, it put out a call to fill about 400 tech roles.

Bhatia joined Goldman Sachs in February 2021 to run the Marcus consumer banking unit. She later added the title of co-CEO of GreenSky, the home improvement lending platform that Goldman bought the same year.

Goldman has since pulled back in consumer lending. Last year, it stopped making personal loans under the Marcus brand. It also ditched plans for a Marcus checking account.

In January, the Wall Street bank sold GreenSky, another step in unwinding its consumer finance business.

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Bhatia stepped away from major responsibilities at Goldman about 15 months ago, but she stayed with the bank as an advisory director until September, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Before joining Goldman, she worked as chief payments risk officer at the payments provider Stripe. She has also held various roles at both PayPal Holdings and Capital One Financial.

Bhatia said she is joining Santander U.S. at a "pivotal moment of transformation and growth."

"Santander's globally connected technology platforms and depth of digital expertise provides a competitive advantage and positions the business for profitable growth in the U.S. market," she said in the release.