Santander
A forward vision for digital banking that could work inside a global bank.
- Programme
- Project Leapfrog
- Scope
- Product, experience and operating model
- Team
- 15-person cross-functional group
- Period
- 2019–2021
Context
The difficult part was not finding ideas. It was getting a global bank to act on them.
Project Leapfrog was set up to define a forward view of digital banking, customer experience and the operating model behind both. The work sat between strategy, product and corporate development.
Each market had its own customers, regulator, economics and delivery commitments. A group-level answer could be strategically sound and still go nowhere if it ignored those conditions.
The substance of the programme remains confidential. This case describes its shape, scale and working method.
Programme design
Build the route to implementation into the strategy.
A 15-person group brought strategy, product, design, research and technology into one programme with a fixed end date and an executive audience. Parallel workstreams were organised around common decisions, so the final recommendation read as one plan rather than a stack of specialist reports.
Operational and technology realities were tested while the work was taking shape. By the time it reached global executives, the conversation could focus on priorities, trade-offs and sequence—not whether the proposal was possible.
- Programme direction
- Product vision
- Customer experience strategy
- Operating-model design
- Cross-market alignment
- Executive recommendations
Key decisions
Turn the vision into choices that markets could use.
Decisions, not a vision deck
Frame the output as sequenced choices with visible trade-offs. Executives could challenge one decision without losing the logic of the whole programme.
Design for the markets
Create a common direction without pretending every market was the same. Individual teams needed a route to adopt the parts that fit their customers and constraints.
Test delivery early
Bring operational and technology scrutiny into the work before executive review. Feasibility was part of the recommendation, not a question left for later.
Make ownership explicit
Connect each recommendation to the people, capabilities and decisions required to move it. Strategy became actionable when accountability was visible.
Venture remit
Apply the same discipline to new businesses.
The wider role included reviewing strategic initiatives and investments, then helping establish a structure for incubating and spinning out ventures. The question was not simply whether an idea was attractive. It was whether the bank was the right owner, what it would take to prove the proposition and how the venture could operate with enough independence to move.
Programme outcome
A future vision connected to real decisions.
The Leapfrog recommendations were presented to global executive teams and fed into the prioritisation of digital rollout across multiple markets. The work gave the bank a shared direction while leaving room for local regulatory, commercial and delivery realities.
Published at programme level only. Strategic recommendations, market detail and corporate-development work remain confidential.
In a bank, a strategy is only as good as its route into the operating model.