Santander Boss: Hoards of Applicants Despite Years of Banker Bashing

Banker bashing has not deterred young people from applying to work at Santander UK, according to the retail bank's HR chief.

Simon Lloyd, human resources director of Santander UK, told IBTimes UK that he has not witnessed a drop in applications from young people despite the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent unpopularity surrounding the financial services sector.

"In our business, we are still getting a very large number of applications of good quality people who want to come to work for us. In the retail banking sector, we're not seeing a difference," Lloyd said.

"[That may be] because we've still got a purpose of helping people with their financial needs."

But the HR chief, who oversees a workforce of 25,000 employees, said that the retail bank has gone through a "cultural transformation programme", which started three years ago.

"We've put a lot of focus on being an organisation which is simple, personal and fair," Lloyd said.

"Part of our general recruitment plan is to look to people with customer empathy. I can teach people how to use a computer, I can teach people how to follow our processes. It's very difficult to teach them to be nice to customers, it almost comes from within.

"Therefore, we have put more focus on recruiting people who have that customer feel. We started doing that three years ago, when we moved from a product focus strategy to a customer focused one."

The comments come after a poll by YouGov for the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment revealed that more than half (53%) of young respondents said they thought working in financial services would be "boring".

The research also revealed that only 24% of young people felt they had any understanding of jobs in the financial services.

In addition the study found that less than one in ten young people said they would be interested in working in financial services.