The Trade Club is an online community of Santander clients from around the world. The Club allows members to interact with other businesses both in the UK and overseas to establish import and export links, and to seek opportunities for growth. Free to all Santander Corporate & Commercial banking customers (footnote 1), the Trade Club also offers added-value services including webinars, virtual trade missions, and preferential prices on freight and translation services.
With ‘lack of knowledge’ being identified by UK businesses as one of the key barriers they face when considering international growth, members of the Trade Club will also benefit from a free 40-hour certified international training programme developed in associated with the International Chamber of Commerce for two employees (footnote 2).
Research by Santander Corporate & Commercial (footnote 3) found that more than one in seven (14%) UK businesses would like to trade internationally but don’t know how to overcome the various challenges to entering new markets. For firms with annual turnovers above £1 million, the figure rises to 31%, suggesting a strong desire among UK firms to better understand the benefits that exporting can offer.
The Trade Club is the latest tool available from the Santander Trade Portal – www.santandertrade.com – which is also free to all of Santander’s business customers (footnote 1) and helps customers’ access overseas markets, find international stakeholders and source exporting opportunities.
The Santander Trade Portal, which launched in November, helps to demystify the trade process by providing accessible information on market opportunities, tax and regulatory rules and the cost of shipping and foreign exchange. Uniquely, the Portal also provides the name and contact details of potential importers, allowing businesses to make contact and gauge interest without using up significant resources speculatively.
John Carroll, Head of International Business at Santander Corporate & Commercial, said: “Businesses that trade internationally tend to be more resilient and are more likely to grow than purely domestic businesses. Building on the success of the Santander Trade Portal, our Trade Club is another unique way in which we can use our global reach to help UK companies fulfil their international ambitions.
“Users will be able to potentially connect to up to five million other SMEs and corporates across 13 countries, an invaluable facilitator for businesses branching into new international markets and looking to grow and prosper.”
Santander is an official partner for the first International Festival for Business (IFB), which opened on Monday in Liverpool. IFB2014 is a 50 day showcase for British industries and sectors and is designed to help connect UK businesses to new markets, new products and new international partners.
The information contained in our press releases is intended solely for journalists and should not be used by consumers to make financial decisions.
Footnotes:
- To benefit from the Trade Club, customers must be using the Santander online banking service for Corporate & Commercial clients – ‘Santander Connect’.
- This benefit is available to two employees per registered company.
- Research conducted by BDRC Continental among key financial decision makers at 451 SME UK businesses with a turnover of over £50,000 between 4 - 14 March 2013 using CATI-based telephone interviews.
About Us
Santander Corporate & Commercial provides dedicated relationship banking support to businesses with a turnover of more than £250,000. It is part of Santander UK plc, a leading financial services provider in the UK offering a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. At 31 December 2013, Santander UK had more than 14 million active customers with c. 20,000 employees, c. 1,000 branches and 50 regional Corporate Business Centres. Santander UK is subject to the full supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK. Santander UK plc customers are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the UK.
To support trade capabilities across the globe, Santander has an International Desk in each of the markets it operates in, dedicated to helping customers who want to grow their business overseas. Its multilingual teams have extensivemarket knowledge of the countries covered by Santander's network, including details of local macroeconomics and the financial, regulatory, legislative and business environment. Santander is committed to lending to businesses at different stages of their development, including those ready to begin their international journey. Santander UK has a team of highly experienced trade specialists based across the UK who will work with businesses to gain a full understanding of their current and future aims and objectives.
Banco Santander (SAN.MC, STD.N, BNC.LN) is a retail and commercial bank, based in Spain, with a presence in 10 main markets. Santander is the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization. Founded in 1857, Santander had EUR 1.24 trillion in managed funds, 103 million customers, 13,927 branches – more than any other international bank – and 182,958 employees at the close of 2013. It is the largest financial group in Spain and Latin America. It also has significant positions in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Poland and the northeast United States. Santander registered EUR 4.37 billion in attributable profit in 2013, an increase of 90% from the previous year.
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