Santander Launches Safety Net to Eliminate or Reduce Overdraft Fees for Every Client

Raises overdraft threshold to $100, highest of any traditional U.S. Bank

Applied automatically to all clients for maximum ease and flexibility

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Santander Bank, N.A. ("Santander Bank,” “Santander” or “the Bank”) announced today the launch of Santander® Safety Net, which dramatically raises the no-fee overdraft threshold to $100, the highest of any traditional U.S. bank¹ and double the next-highest overdraft threshold of leading competitors ($50). This industry-leading overdraft program applies automatically to every Santander Bank client and is expected to completely eliminate overdraft fees for nearly one-third of clients who have recently overdrawn.

“We’re here for our clients, and we want them to know that we have their back. They told us they need more leeway to manage the unexpected, especially during these challenging times, and so we’re launching Santander Safety Net for every client and applying it to any transaction type including debit, bank-to-bank transfers and checks,” said Pierre Habis, Head of Consumer and Business Banking at Santander Bank. “I’m excited to see the positive impact it will have in our clients’ daily lives.”

In addition to Santander Safety Net, the Bank has made other automatic changes to its overdraft fee structure including:

• Eliminating the overdraft protection transfer fee: The $12 fee to automatically move money from one account to a checking account to avoid overdrawing has been eliminated.
• Reducing the daily overdraft fee cap by half: The maximum daily number of overdraft paid and overdraft returned fee charges ($35) dropped from six to three for each.

Santander is committed to providing an equitable and responsible banking experience to its current and prospective clients. For more information on the Bank’s new overdraft policy, please visit www.santanderbank.com/overdraft.

Santander Bank, N.A. is one of the country’s largest retail and commercial banks with $89.5 billion in assets. With its corporate offices in Boston, the Bank’s approximately 9,200 employees and more than 2 million customers are principally located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Bank is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Madrid-based Banco Santander, S.A. (NYSE: SAN) - one of the most respected banking groups in the world with 150 million customers in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. It is overseen by Santander Holdings USA, Inc., Banco Santander’s intermediate holding company in the U.S. For more information on Santander Bank, please visit www.santanderbank.com.

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¹ Traditional bank defined as brick-and-mortar bank with physical branches, as compared to online-only banks with no physical presence. https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/april2020.html