Financial markets are undergoing structural transformation driven by accelerating technological change, geopolitical shifts and evolving client expectations. The integration of data analytics, trading technology and digital market infrastructure into capital markets activity is reshaping how institutions operate and deliver value. In this environment, dialogue between market participants, technology providers and policymakers is increasingly important.

Against this backdrop, Santander Corporate & Investment Banking (Santander CIB) recently welcomed Mike Bloomberg to its London offices for discussions with senior leadership. The visit focused on capital markets digital transformation, geopolitical fragmentation and the growing centrality of data in financial decision-making.

Over recent years, the convergence of finance and technology has intensified. Market participants are investing in electronic trading platforms, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time market data infrastructure to enhance execution efficiency and client insight. At the same time, geopolitical developments continue to influence capital flows, regulatory frameworks and cross-border market connectivity.

Trading technology, data and market infrastructure

A highlight of the visit included a tour of Santander’s trading floor, where discussions centred on Bloomberg Terminal usage and the broader evolution of market infrastructure. Data has become foundational to trading, risk management and client advisory. The capacity to process, interpret and act on information at speed is now a core competitive factor in global markets.

Modern trading environments rely on integrated platforms that combine pricing data, analytics, communication tools and execution capabilities. As market structure evolves, collaboration between financial institutions and technology providers supports transparency, liquidity and operational resilience.

From pricing sovereign bonds to structuring complex derivatives and managing cross-asset risk, connected financial technology ecosystems underpin every stage of the capital markets value chain.

AI, Governance and resilience in capital markets

Engagement between financial institutions and technology leaders extends beyond product functionality. It also touches on broader themes: data governance, regulatory expectations, artificial intelligence adoption and cybersecurity resilience.

As markets become more interconnected, systemic stability increasingly depends on the robustness of digital infrastructure. Financial institutions must therefore balance innovation with disciplined risk management, ensuring that new capabilities enhance resilience.

Senior-level dialogue supports alignment on long-term priorities, including how AI in trading and capital markets can be deployed responsibly within strong governance frameworks.

The Future of Capital Markets Technology

Technological innovation in capital markets is expected to accelerate. Artificial intelligence, automation and advanced analytics will continue to transform trading, advisory and risk functions. Meanwhile, geopolitical developments will shape cross-border investment patterns and regulatory oversight.

Institutions combining technological sophistication data-driven decision-making and strong governance will be best positioned to support clients in evolving market conditions. Collaboration across the financial ecosystem (including data providers, policymakers, market participants and policymakers) remains central to sustaining and transparent markets.

As global markets adapt, leadership engagement across finance and technology will help shape the next phase of digital market infrastructure development.

Reaching execution day in a project finance transaction is an exercise in many things; just one of those being project management. This can span from forming the project company through to working with sponsors, legal advisors, lenders, agency providers, commercial and construction contracts - the list goes on.
 

A critical role is that of the account bank. This is not just a safe counterparty for the project company, but a key partner in achieving transparency and control for all stakeholders.
 

The role of account bank is an area where Santander CIB’s deep history in Structured Finance has cross-pollinated expertise and experience. Our Global Transaction Banking division has significant experience in structuring, executing and managing account bank roles across Europe and the Americas.
 

Below we have laid out the biggest considerations when weighing up account bank providers, to ensure a smooth close and stable project life.

1. Minimal execution risk

Given the number of stakeholders involved in even a simple project finance structure, a small delay to financial close can have significant knock-on effects. One of the most common sources is the KYC process, which can be time-consuming in a time-sensitive situation.

Sponsors should look for:

• Willingness to share indicative lists of requirements at an early stage of the process to allow pre-work to begin ASAP
• A single points of contact who will manage requirements and responses
• Banks with which they have an existing wider relationship to maximise existing knowledge
   

A bank which efficiently manages this workstream ensures no impact to the necessary time frames, as well as reducing resource requirements from the sponsor and project company.
 

2. Speed and pragmatism

Given that sponsors are typically at the centre of a web of many stakeholders, the account bank agreement (ABA) touches many, if not all, of these.

As such, drafting and negotiating the ABA and any cascaded documentation, such as pledges, security documents or electronic banking agreements must be done with this in mind.

When deciding on an account bank provider sponsors should seek the following:

• Banks with experienced and dedicated Global Transaction Banking legal teams, who have experience of working closely with their Structured Finance colleagues
• Partners which show flexibility in aligning document language with market practice, sponsor requirements and the nature of the project
   

A bank with a strong track record of pragmatism will ensure that all parties are comfortable and controlled. In addition, agreements can then be considered as a precedent for future replicable transactions between the same sponsor and bank, further enhancing speed.

3. Practically workable structures

Generally, account structures are conceived in a purely theoretical way, without thought for the operational impact of these after signing or during the life of the underlying project/asset.

While the agreements may be executed and funded on time, there can be later downstream issues if the bank account setup or ABA are overly complex, inflexible, or misaligned with the project’s real-world needs.

Key questions which you may consider at the outset:

• Can the bank reasonably implement the waterfall as described and defined?
• Can account and electronic banking setups evolve with the project as it grows?
• How can we check and evidence internal controls throughout the life of the ABA?
   

As project sponsor it is important to work with account bank partners who will quickly and concisely provide feedback on these practicalities. Sponsors should favour banks that not only agree to terms on paper, but that also align their internal operations, systems, and service model to the agreed structure.

4. Long-term projects and long-term relationships

By its very nature, project finance is a long-term transaction, so a reliable, responsive partner is key to ensuring that the project company can meet their ongoing reporting requirements in an efficient way. This can include adapting to changes to payment systems as standards evolve, or finding an efficient way to reuse the existing setup at refinancing.

Ask yourself if your banking partner is likely to be the best bank now given that they are technically capable, but will they also be relationship oriented in five or more years’ time?
Sponsors should assess:

•    The account bank’s experience with similar projects and countries
•    The level of ongoing support offered post-close, including responsiveness to change requests and day-to-day queries
 

What may seem like a small administrative role at financial close can become pivotal in moments of change or transition. Sponsors benefit from account banks that take a long-term view and understand the broader dynamics at play of relationships than span the entire organisation.

Weighing up and choosing your partner

The choice of account bank is a strategic, long-term selection for sponsors and other stakeholders.

This provider will bring together all if its stakeholders for the benefit of the project company: compliance, operations, legal, product development and relationship management.

Your ideal partner is one like Santander CIB, a partner experienced in the complexity of project finance and account bank structures, who will bring urgency, flexibility and feedback to the table.

At Santander CIB, we combine technical expertise with a white-glove approach to serving our clients, so that sponsors can focus on delivering successful project outcomes, with minimal risk.

Angel Bustos, Global Head of Cash Management, Originations and Strategy, Santander CIB: “The account bank is more than just a functional component, it's a strategic enabler. At Santander CIB, we recognise that project finance sponsors need partners who combine flawless execution with long-term relationship thinking. That’s why we bring together cross-functional expertise to deliver structures that are not only compliant and efficient at day one, but also scalable and practical over the life of the project.”
 

Our Global Transaction Banking and Structured Finance colleagues are always open to engage on ideas in supporting your ABA needs today and in the future.
 

Is your company considering a spin off, acquisition, or merger?

Santander CIB’s Cash Management team has deep expertise in aiding Treasury teams to successfully execute these events, by providing innovative solutions and bespoke advice. 

We know it’s imperative for our clients to move quickly, in order to internally prepare the business for such events. 

Whether it’s undertaking early preparation ahead of time-sensitive activity, establishing the right operating model to ensure efficiency account framework critical to business, or aiding our clients to operate a parallel setup of Cash Management activities – including payables, receivables and liquidity – before the execution date, Santander CIB’s team is committed to supporting its clients to achieve their business goals. 

Key considerations for a smooth Treasury transition

Santander CIB supports clients in many different ways during key corporate events, through precise planning and solution implementation.

1. Ease the segregation of Treasury systems 

To ease this segregation, early project management is vital. This includes a clear understanding of the organisational structure. Achieving this clarity of structure can be done with Santander CIB’s help, via a range of bank account frameworks, new legal entities, connectivity, platforms and KYC.

To best support our clients, we take care in providing coordination and resources between the pivotal Treasury teams, IT support and ourselves.

2. Balance sheet optimisation

This is maintained or augmented through having a clear line of sight of liquidity in each geography and currency. 

During these parallel operations, Santander CIB works to establish segregated, dynamic cash pool structures that can be adapted as the transaction advances. By rerouting concentration to a new header account, for example, we are optimising excess cash whilst potentially using reconciliation tools to limit obstructions to collections.
 

3. Deliver products and services with little disruption

In order to ensure prompt delivery of products with minimal disruption to customers, suppliers and staff, clear visibility and accurate forecasting are essential. To support clients in their transition, whether it is a spin-off from the parent company, or an M&A transaction, Santander CIB will support the maintenance of payments, collections and payroll structures that is so crucial.  

4. Smooth and successful settlement of the transaction 

Early identification of fund flow execution is key. By understanding how proceeds settle in the days leading up to deal, and orchestrating Treasury involvement as early as possible, is paramount for a seamless completion.

Key considerations include:
- consolidation and distribution of funds
- escrow requirements
- currency and FX 
- account requirements for fiscal and ringfencing purposes
 

Settlement of funds can take time and cause hiccups at execution, but can be alleviated by engaging with the bank early and mapping out an execution plan for funding together. Santander CIB has considerable experience in supporting clients with strategic distributions.

5. Opportunities for enhancement 

There is a consistent necessity for development through identifying potential opportunities for enhancement when it comes to upgrading technology, streamlining connectivity, and improving STP, allowing for an improved, simplified structure. 

Through a geographical lens, there are also opportunities for development and further consolidation in core regions, with Santander CIB acting as a trusted partner. 


Carlos Gutierrez, Global Transaction Banking - Head of Cash & Lending Sales Europe: “We are fully committed in supporting our clients’ Cash Management journey to successfully execute a spin-off, acquisition, merger. As a leading pan-European and pan-American Cash Management, liquidity and FX Bank, our expertise is there to help our clients succeed.”
 

Reducing the cost of capital will always be a core KPI for corporate treasurers, with a future-proofed cash and liquidity management strategy increasingly seen as a key component for this.

Here at Santander CIB, we have seen approaches take different forms in developed and emerging markets, driven by the complexity of the country and currency in question. 
 

Below is a toolkit to assist in making sure liquidity rationalisation remains firmly on your radar throughout the year for maximum cost:benefit. In both cases, internally communicating the financial cost improvements is essential for success and stakeholder buy in.

Step 1: The brilliant basics with convertible currencies

With EUR, GBP, USD and other deliverable currencies, the first step is to look at what is where, and how long you have been taking this approach. For example, when was the last time that buffer balances in cash pools were mapped to understand if liquidity can be stripped out and redeployed elsewhere? Daylight and overnight overdrafts are a useful tool to reassure business units and other stakeholders that straight-through-processing will take place despite a more robust approach to balance management. 
 

Next is taking balance and transaction reporting data to understand what is not pooled, as well as where there is non-functional currency exposure at the subsidiary level.

For un-pooled balances, assuming that there is already good ongoing communication with tax colleagues, it is a quick win to demonstrate to subsidiary finance managers the upside of connecting to the group structure. For those entities which have flown under the radar because of changes in strategy or legal structure, partner with your Corporate Secretarial partners to agree on a closure plan which can extract idle cash. 
 

We also suggest taking a strong approach to non-functional currencies. These are often relatively small balances where the received wisdom has been that there is not the cost:benefit to centralise liquidity. Aside from the opportunity cost of cash of these positions, they trigger a lot of accounting work without the business need being well understood. Here, it is important to demonstrate the business case for automated cross-currency payments and collections as an efficiency tool. This will reassure business units that there will be an overall cost saving, without any impact to customer or supplier relations. 
 

By tracking and communicating the cash released through this process, you can not only better service your debt and reduce opportunity costs, but also secure buy-in from management for future treasury technology investment which will strengthen the business case further.
 

Partnering with our clients during this creative thinking is one of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking’s strengths. By extracting historic payment data, we have assisted clients in easily demonstrating where there is a business case to migrate payments or receipts in non-core currencies to our global suite of cross currency solutions to reduce cost and complexity in their overseas operations.
 

In turn, this has enabled our customers to automate management of core currencies, including those where Santander is a market leader such as EUR, GBP, USD, MXN and PLN.

Step 2: The deep dive into more complex currencies

One of the most challenging actions after the steps outlined above is to map the remaining lazy cash, including instances where it is legally possible but administratively difficult due to distribute reserves, for example.
 

It is important to look at the mix of cost and profit centres in emerging markets, such as Latin America, and understand the nature of flows into and out of these countries - where delivery is being undertaken for intercompany flows, for instance.

Automated cross-currency transactions should be engineered into your processes, where possible, from a regulatory perspective, and awareness of where flows cannot be fully automated, due to formatting or documentation requirements, communicated to ensure a common understanding. This will result in ease of cash movement, reassuring colleagues that funding is there, should it be required, and facilitating dialogue on how much cash is needed in-country. 

Depending on the country in question and its business model, this may see changes to dividend and equity injection processes, or the adoption of offshore collections hubs (e.g. USD receipts paid into a non-resident account at your HQ location). Such changes necessitate working closely with in-house counsel and experienced banking partners to understand regulatory requirements, as well as what is practically feasible.

The business case will quickly become clear, however, that balances in ARS, BRL, CLP, COP, PEN, UYU and others are an often-forgotten source of cash which can be deployed more effectively at HQ level.

With Santander CIB’s unparalleled reachability in Latin America, we offer our clients dedicated contacts and outstanding local knowledge. This ensures that regulatory requirements do not delay access to cash by subsidiaries or HQ, reducing the opportunity cost of cash and increasing control.

Step 3: Futureproofing and treasury transformation

Greater control and access to funds is not a benefit to treasury alone. For each success in the journey above, highlighting to your business units that with every penny centralised or released, they have directly contributed to a reduction in leverage or the cost of capital. 

Demonstrating the wins ensures that treasury’s mandate for continued improvement is stronger than ever before. Santander’s suite of new solutions, ranging from cross-currency sweeps to automated reconciliation mechanisms, are the ideal tools to continue your evolution and see structures which are future-proofed.

Iria Fernandez (Global Head of Cash Management, Santander CIB), says: “In this journey, Santander is your ideal partner. As a leading pan-European and pan-American cash management, liquidity and FX house, our expertise is second to none and at your complete disposal.”
 

The emergence of instant payments has been a gamechanger, with its 24/7/365 nature revolutionizing the payment & treasury ecosystem. Banks have adapted to rising consumer expectations and inherent regulatory changes, both in terms of standardization and swift processing, all while compliant with regulatory affair controls.    

Retail consumers in Europe and other regions were the first to drive these changes by adopting digital and secure real-time solutions as an alternative for cash and as another standard requirement for accessing commercial and financial markets. Card payments or instant Account-to-Account (A2A) payment schemes like BIZUM in Spain or BLIK in Poland provide users with an immediate update and confirmation in contrast to the traditional batch processing of payments during or at the end of each business day. The deployment of alternative, instant payment solutions has been evolving ever since entering also the B2B space. 

The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SEPA Instant) regulation in Europe was first launched back in 2017, but its obligatory implementation for banks across the 27 EU member states starts on January 9, 2025, for reception, followed by October 9, 2025 for the issuance of instant euro payments. For other Payment and Electronic Money Entities the adoption deadline expires on April 9, 2027.   

This is part of a wider effort to bring the euro payment landscape up to speed, given that nowadays, the share of instant payments in Europe is still low compared with other global regions where India and Brazil dominate the real-time payments market by volume. The forecast for Europe is that instant payments will account for 13% of all electronic payments in 2028 up from 8% in 2023.  
 

How can multinational corporates benefit from the SEPA Instant implementation? 

The operational and strategical long-term advantages of instant payments are substantial for corporate clients across the SEPA countries:

Enhancement of liquidity management and cash flows 

• Faster collections and the immediate availability of funds will enable faster treasury operations and reduce liquidity constraints by optimizing cash forecasting and management. 
• Improved cash conversion cycles of receivables and payables, leading to quicker access to working capital.

Operational efficiency

• Secure and verified 24/7 payment processing outside of traditional banking hours and across time zones.
• A faster reconciliation of traceable processes, reducing operational queries.

Operational costs

• Real-time access to funds reduces reliance on costly short-term financing solutions, reducing interest expenses.
• Charges applied on instant payments cannot exceed those applicable for regular SCTs.

Competitive advantage 

• Strengthens the relationship and enhances the trust and experience with customers and suppliers through a more rapid settlement of refunds or payments.

Where does Santander CIB come in?

At Santander CIB, we are driving innovation by bringing forward a wider range of payment methods and schemes to our multinational corporate clients, to allow for a more efficient allocation of resources and better cash management practices. 

We support the application and timeline of the SEPA Inst scheme in the Eurozone, which enables the instant transfer of euro payments from one payer account to that of a payee within 10 seconds, at any time, on any day (24/7/365). 

The scheme applies to payers issuing payments in euros from any currency account, between accounts inside the SEPA Eurozone. The current limit for retail instant payments is €100,000 but banks can eventually raise this for corporate users to make the scheme even more attractive.

MONICA ROMAN, Head of Payment Solutions at Santander GTB Europe: "We have faced an ambitious project to connect all our European Units and their payment channels to SEPA Instant. It will be the foundation stone for forthcoming value-added products for our customers. We are proud of our support for multinationals in these important areas, advising them on how to best create the standards for instant payments within their respective operational framework, sectors, and markets."

LAUREANO RUBIN DE CELIS RODRÍGUEZ, Head of Cash Management Sales at Santander GTB in Spain: "Santander in Spain was the first group unit to activate SEPA Instant payments after the official launch of the scheme. In recent years, our multinational corporate clients have found a way to unlock their value by optimizing their cash flow through the immediate availability of incoming funds."
 

Author: Ute Stammeyer, Head of Cash Management Advisory Europe at Santander Group.
 

For further questions, please contact the Cash Management Advisory Team in Europe (cashadvisory@gruposantander.com)