To help customers manage their finances, Santander has launched two new tools on its Financial Support Hub, a Budget Calculator and Financial Health Check.
These tools will “provide customers with advice on how to manage their finances, helping them to review their spending and budget effectively.” These new tools will also “be available through our mobile banking app.”
The Financial Health Check is “a personal review of customers’ finances via a free, online questionnaire which takes less than five minutes to complete.”
Questions include “the amount of borrowing a customer has, any repayments they might be behind on, any savings they may have or budgeting tools they may use.” The tool then calculates “their overall financial health and provides tailored suggestions and help, dependent on the customer’s situation.” This could “include how to cut household bills and links to external providers for further support.”
The Budget Calculator “allows customers to see their incomings and outgoings in one place, and to get tips on saving money.” Customers enter “their income, spending by category e.g. mortgage or rent, energy bills, insurance, food shopping as well as spend on entertainment, transport etc.” The tool then “calculates the total outgoings and provides a handy chart to show the percentage of their income spent per category.”
Josie Clapham, Director of Financial Support at Santander commented:
“We want to give our customers the practical tools and helpful advice they need to understand their incomings and outgoings each month and where their spend goes. Households are facing some really difficult decisions over the next few months about how best to manage their money with the cost of living impacting everyday spending.
Josie added:
“Our new tools offer customers guidance and support to help them manage their finances and ensure they are making the right financial decisions every day. For anyone facing difficulties, we would urge them to open up and talk to us at the first signs of money worries so we can find the best ways to support them.”
Santander is “proactively identifying and contacting customers who may be experiencing financial pressures as a result of the increases in the cost of living and has, to date, contacted over two million customers to provide them with help and support with managing their finances.”
As noted in the update, Santander UK is “a financial services provider in the UK that offers a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services.”
At 30 June 2022, the bank “had around 18,000 employees and serves around 14 million active customers, via a nationwide branch network, telephone, mobile and online banking.”
Santander UK is “subject to the full supervision of the FCA and the PRA in the UK.” Santander UK plc customers’ eligible deposits “are protected by the FSCS in the UK.”
Banco Santander claims it is “a leading commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in the Europe, North America and South America regions, and is one of the largest banks in the world by market capitalization.”
Santander aims “to be the best open financial services platform providing services to individuals, SMEs, corporates, financial institutions and governments.”
The bank’s purpose is “to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way.”
Santander is “building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising €220 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2030, as well as financially empowering more than 10 million people over the same period.”