BANCO SANTANDER SA

Their core work

Banco Santander is one of Europe's largest commercial banks, headquartered in Cantabria, Spain. Within H2020, the bank acts as an industry partner in Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral training and co-funding programmes, providing real-world financial sector placements and applied research problems for early-stage researchers. Their involvement centres on two areas: supporting international doctoral education infrastructure (university partnerships, employability programmes) and contributing domain expertise in quantitative finance — specifically risk management, derivatives pricing, and valuation adjustments (XVA). They do not lead research but serve as the corporate host where academic theory meets banking practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Santander's early H2020 involvement (2015–2016) focused broadly on international education infrastructure — doctoral training, employability, interdisciplinarity, and cross-sectoral research exchange. By 2017–2018, their participation narrowed toward technically specific financial mathematics: XVA, derivatives pricing, computational algorithms, and risk management. This shift suggests a move from general corporate social responsibility in education toward deploying their quantitative finance teams as genuine research partners in applied mathematics projects.

Santander is moving from passive sponsorship of doctoral programmes toward active participation in applied quantitative finance research, making them increasingly relevant for projects needing real banking-sector data and expertise.

How they like to work

Santander never coordinates — they join as a participant or third-party partner, providing industry placements and domain expertise rather than project management. Despite only four projects, they connect to 90 unique partners across 20 countries, reflecting the large, multi-institutional nature of MSCA training networks rather than deep bilateral relationships. Working with them means accessing a major bank's infrastructure and real-world problem sets, but expecting them to drive the research agenda or handle EU project administration would be unrealistic.

Connected to 90 unique partners across 20 countries through MSCA training networks, giving them an unusually broad European reach for a non-academic participant. This network is inherited from large doctoral consortia rather than built through repeated bilateral collaboration.

What sets them apart

Santander brings something most academic consortia lack: a direct pipeline into the risk management and quantitative finance operations of a systemically important European bank. For MSCA or applied mathematics projects, they offer researcher placements where doctoral candidates work on live financial problems — derivatives pricing, valuation adjustments, risk modelling — with real market data. Few H2020 industry partners can match this combination of scale, regulatory relevance, and technical depth in banking.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ABC-EU-XVA
  Highly specific applied finance topic (XVA valuation adjustments) — unusual for H2020 and directly tied to post-crisis banking regulation, showing Santander engaging with problems central to its own operations.
• DIRS
  Deusto International Research School — a broad MSCA-COFUND programme spanning multiple disciplines, demonstrating Santander's role as a corporate partner in Spain's doctoral education ecosystem.