According to Santander’s executive chair, Ana Botín, many people in Brazil underestimated the risks of the pandemic to Latin America in early 2020. “If we hadn’t taken the steps we took in Brazil in February, we wouldn’t have been ready,” she says.
If Santander had needed to rush, “getting ready for remote work would not have been that easy,” says Ms Botín, whose Brazilian operations rely on a staff of nearly 50,000. These staff are also the group’s most profitable: as of June, Brazil generated about a third of total underlying attributable profit, which is nearly four times that of Santander’s home market, Spain. A year earlier, this ratio was 2:1.
