Banco Santander

Banco Santander is a large retail and commercial bank for people who need current accounts, cards, loans, mortgages and business banking across a broad branch and digital network. By our assessment, its main advantage is scale: it can cover a lot of ordinary banking ground in one place, from personal finance to small-business needs. The cost of that breadth is a fairly corporate feel, with product menus and terms that can be more complex than a smaller local bank. In practice it is the sort of bank that handles salary accounts, transfers and home loans while also being a serious cross-border group. It sits among the major European banks rather than the tidy app-only crowd, and that wider reach is part of the appeal. The Astrina catalogue records it as Spanish.