Santander International is sponsoring the Awards for Excellence’s pre-show party at the Sefton Hotel later this month. Working Week spoke to James Geldart, managing director of the Santander International Isle of Man branch, about its successful Work Café venture.

It’s fair to say that there’s a lot of love in the business community for Santander’s Work Café.

A brilliant community hub where you can do some work, hold a meeting and get a great cup of coffee.

And, if you bank with Santander International, it’s also your local branch where you can talk to the people who are looking after your account or mortgage.

The success of what was a very new concept for the island is demonstrated by the stats.

The Work Café opened in May 2023 and, in the first 17 months alone, it recorded a footfall of 130,000 people, 5,000 meeting room bookings and 190 community and charity events.

James Geldart, who is from the island, has been at Santander International for eight years, the last four in the Isle of Man. He previously worked for the bank in Jersey where Santander also has a popular Work Café.

He says: ‘What we saw was an opportunity to engage with people in a very different way, giving them an environment in which to engage with our brand and come and do their banking.

‘There is a prevailing trend, in other industries but particularly in banking, to distance face-to-face contact from the customer, encouraging them to “do it yourself online” or “ring the contact centre” instead.

‘We have both those channels but we appreciate that a lot of people want to meet people face-to-face and we actively encourage our customers, and non-customers, to come in and talk to us.

‘I think the fact that we’re acknowledging that, head on, and making ourselves available is really important.

‘That’s one of the key things with the Work Café, it’s for everybody, it’s not just for customers.

‘And one of the acid tests for me is that, every time I come in here, I look around and I think “how many of these people would have walked into a branch?”’

Santander has also invested in technology that supports giving customers a great service.

James says: ‘We changed our account opening process, providing the technology to allow us to open accounts quickly. We make decisions in island so, for things like mortgages and accounts, we make can make local decisions with local knowledge.

‘We often get people who walk in here because they’ve been told it’s an eight to 12 week wait just to get an appointment at another bank.’

James acknowledges that there was an element of risk for a bank going into the hospitality business, especially with a completely new concept like a Work Café, which had never been tried here before.

He says:‘Yes it was a risk but we know our customers and our markets really well.

‘One of the key things for us was to partner with the right coffee people and I would like to acknowledge Noa in this.

‘Because, as well as a good building, you need a great cup of coffee, and you have to have really good high-speed internet for people wanting to work there.’

And the good news is that the Work Café is planning to expand.

James say: ‘We have acknowledged that the increasing popularity of being able to book free meeting rooms with videoconferencing facilities has meant that there is now a real demand for more of them.

‘So one of the things we will be doing is an expansion into the lower floor. The Noble Suitor is relocating and there are plans to use that space to increase the meeting room capacity.’

There is no doubt that people acknowledge the fact that, with the Work Café’, Santander International has ‘given back’ to the local community. And this, says James, comes down to purpose and ethos.

‘Our purpose as a bank is to help people and businesses prosper.

‘And our ethos is: you can’t ask somebody to do something for you unless you’ve put the effort in and we wanted to do this: to demonstrate that we’re good people and that we’re doing good things in the community.

‘As an organisation we do pride ourselves on doing things a little bit differently and being quite entrepreneurial.’