Innovation is more than just a buzzword for the country’s biggest lenders Santander’s Openbank has changed a great deal since it was founded as Spain’s first telephone banking service in 1995. Now a fully digital operation, its mobile app allows users to temporarily disarm a lost credit card, as well as to check whether fellow Openbank customers are buying or selling a given stock at any moment. Currently, it has some 1.2m customers in Spain and more than €8bn ($9.3bn) in assets under management. Earlier this year, the bank moved from Santander’s suburban corporate headquarters to a separate building just off Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana, where its 140 employees work in open-plan offices with cabinets displaying the team ties they used to wear.

https://www.ft.com/content/da0a4438-bb04-11e7-8c12-5661783e5589