Santander Bank Polska Cuts Costs and Boosts Compliance With Hitachi’s Durable Medium Solution

The Challenge: Make Paperless Communications Secure and Accessible

From checking balances to making a payment, the demand for digital banking services is growing every day. With 50% of customers switching to a fully digital banking experience, Santander Bank Polska needed to make sensitive data available on a durable medium.

Santander Bank Polska is the third largest bank in Poland, with a 12% market share. It has 9,500 employees and aims to deliver simple, personal and fair financial services to its 6.5 million customers.

The bank has worked hard over the last two years to encourage as many customers as possible to switch to electronic communications and digital channels, which are more convenient for both parties. Its customer portal features a secure mailbox with documents, which are signed electronically and time stamped, displayed in PDF format.

The bank needed to find a way to store them permanently to comply with industry regulations, which require financial firms to provide certain information to customers in writing, either on paper or via another durable medium.

The European Court of Justice defines durable medium as a platform where documents can be viewed, but not deleted or modified, and accessed, even after a contract or relationship has ended. If it fails to meet the criteria for durable medium, Santander Bank Polska could face sanctions by regulators, including large financial penalties. The bank could also be required to return to paper communications until it demonstrates compliance. These sanctions could impact customer confidence in the bank, resulting in lost business.

The Solution: Fully Integrated and Compliant Storage

Santander Bank Polska has a long-standing relationship with Hitachi Europe, which partnered with the bank to deliver its first paperless projects in 2015. Over the intervening years, the partnership has helped the bank to not only safeguard compliance but also bring innovative business solutions to life.

As an experienced durable medium solution provider, Hitachi Vantara was a natural choice for the bank's latest data management and storage transformation. Based on Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), the Hitachi durable medium solution has been developed in collaboration with some of Europe's biggest banks to comply with current regulations.

In March 2018, Santander Bank Polska implemented HCP in less than a month. Integrating HCP with its document management solution, Alfresco, allows the bank to protect digital files and messages shared via its customer portal. HCP provides "write once, read many" (WORM) storage capabilities, a vital feature for establishing a durable medium. These capabilities mean the bank can store customers' information within its infrastructure without needing to involve third parties.

In the first month of deployment, the bank migrated 1.2 million customers to the new durable medium storage solution. Public documents, such as terms and conditions and banking regulations, have already been migrated to the platform. Santander Bank Polska is now preparing for the second stage of the migration, which will see private digital communications between the bank and its customers added to the platform.

The Outcomes: Reduced Costs and Improved Customer Services

By partnering with Hitachi, Santander Bank Polska can support digital interactions with its customers and, at the same time, be confident that it is storing messages and documents in compliance with durable medium regulations.

The bank's portal gives customers secure, 24/7 access to documents and communications. Engaging with its customers on digital channels is extremely cost-effective for the bank, reducing expenditure on postage, paper and physical storage space. In addition to reducing operational costs and saving resources, the bank can safeguard information life-cycle management by taking a digital approach.

The Hitachi solution has helped Santander Bank Polska not only ensure compliance, and thereby mitigate the financial risk, but also boost customer confidence. Demonstrating that it takes data security seriously helps to reassure and attract new customers.

About Hitachi Europe Ltd.

Hitachi Europe Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., is headquartered in Maidenhead, UK. The company is focused on its Social Innovation Business - delivering innovations that answer society's challenges. Hitachi Europe and its subsidiary companies offers a broad range of information & telecommunication systems; rail systems, power and industrial systems; industrial components & equipment; automotive systems, digital media & consumer products and others with operations and research & development Laboratories across EMEA. For more information, visit http://www.hitachi.eu.