John Whelan, currently director of the bank’s blockchain lab, will lead a new ‘Digital Investment Banking’ team within Santander Corporate & Investment Banking. The team’s aim is to ensure Santander is utilizing the latest technologies to bring the best possible bespoke solutions to clients, including exploring the use of tokenized securities in debt capital markets, derivatives and other products.

José M. Linares, Santander’s senior executive vice-president and global head of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, said: “The wave of digitalization that is occurring in the financial industry is accelerating. Our clients expect this to result in better solutions, lower costs and new categories of products and services that enable them to access capital markets more efficiently than ever before. We want to offer our clients what they expect from us”.

John Whelan joined Banco Santander’s blockchain lab in 2016, leading a team responsible for exploring the application of this technology in the financial industry.

Santander is playing a leading role in the application of blockchain technology within financial services. The bank’s One Pay FX service was the first international payments service to launch across multiple markets using blockchain-based technology. Santander is also a founding member of several consortia, including Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Alastria, we.trade and Utility Settlement Coin.