Santander in-sources IT systems

(By Richard Holway 8.00am 28th May 09) You are going to see a lot more of the Santander logo as the group has decided to abandon the Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley 'brands' from next year.

Santander is an object lesson in 'in-sourcing'. The reason why they can do this brand integration and allow group customers to transact in any branch is that they have always acted fast to bring banking systems in house under their proprietary Partenon IT system. This has enabled Santender to cut thousands of IT jobs with significant savings. But it's not good news for the incumbent IT suppliers.

Bank mergers have been rife in the last 18 months and, with building societies now the merger target, are likely to continue. As IT systems are integrated there are bound to be more IT Services losers than gainers. Unless, of course, you are Accenture which got a £100m/2 year contract from Santander to assist them with the integration!