Banking Uncovered Episode 28: Redefining relationship banking in a digital-first world
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What is the purpose of Banking Uncovered and who is the guest on this episode?
Welcome to RFI's Banking Uncovered, the podcast going behind the industry PR, the media spin, the product awards and the investor reports to look at what's really going on in the customer data. And to ask Global Thought leaders about their thoughts and views on the future of banking and payments.
Uh hi everyone. Uh welcome to the latest episode of Banking Uncovered with me, John Ruston. I spearhead all of our business banking and commercial banking insights here at RFI. And therefore it gives me immense pleasure to introduce uh our next guest on the podcast, uh, which is Claire May. Uh Claire, welcome, welcome to the podcast.
Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Uh before we kick start, I'm really excited to diving into Claire. What feels like a topic which has really re-emerged of interest over the last two to three years, which is the role of you know, relationship managers in the business banking and commercial banking space. I'm super excited to get stuck stuck into that. Some really interesting insights which which we'll be sharing. Um however before we we kick start, are you okay to give our our listeners um an introduction to yourself um and your role at Santander?
Yeah, of course. Thank you. Um so yeah, as you say, uh my name's Claire May. I head up the commercial clients business for Santander UK Bank. Um and that may basically means we look after businesses um of sort of two million turnover up to around 25 million turnover. Um so we're really um at the forefront of um SME businesses and growth in the UK. Um and we have six regions across the country. Um 40 relationship directors and 20 relationship managers who really lead those relationship teams and support our clients. Um yeah, always been in banking, John. So a bit about me, just always been in banking, always been in corporate and commercial banking in various roles, um, lots of leadership roles, sort of frontline teams, um, with a short few roles in risk and um latterly in data and transformation, which we were I'm sure we're
we're going to touch on um some of those bits um as we go through today.
Absolutely great. Um, welcome again. It's it's great to have you with us. Um before we kick start, and again, we'll we'll frame our discussion around the the re-emergence of the relationship manager, so to speak, is something which has become increasingly top of mind from our perspective. However, we wanted to to recognise that over the over the the last couple of months or so, we we hosted our inaugural RFI UK Banking and Finance Awards. Um and Santander picked up the big scoops of uh best business loan services and uh best relationship managers. Um so if you could you know just touch on and reflect upon what that means ultimately, you know, for for you for you all as Santander as essentially, you know, those awards were driven and underpinned by our voice of customer data.
So essentially You know, being voted the best in those two aspects by your own customers must be extremely, extremely satisfying.
Absolutely satisfying. And and you know, everything we do, we are doing to to make it things better for our clients. So I think it was just great recognition um of the hard work we've put in around the support and the quality of the relationship teams in place. Um we feel that that is, you know, really important. And over the past sort of eighteen months in particular and but in in particular in two thousand and twenty five, we we designed a bespoke training programme for our client facing teams because we felt that um although they were already delivering great service, we could elevate that even further so we could make those conversations even more valuable for the the clients that we were supporting.
And actually this award came, you know, off the back of um what felt like a massive investment in time and sometimes you don't know whether that's all going to pay off. Um and it felt it felt great to sort of hear from our clients that actually the support that they were getting for the relationship teams really was making a difference.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the purpose of Banking Uncovered and who is the guest on this episode?
0:00–6:36
2
How did Santander win the UK Banking & Finance Awards for Relationship Managers and Business Loans?
6:36–14:42
3
Why is the role of Relationship Managers becoming more critical in a digital‑first world?
14:42–23:59
4
How have customer expectations for digital self‑serve and human expertise evolved?
23:59–29:08
5
What determines when businesses need self‑serve tools versus human relationship support?
29:08–31:35
6
Which ‘moments that matter’ create the biggest value for relationship managers?
31:35–35:27