Direct Financing Partners Acquisition and set up

Company

🏦 Santander

Skill Area

B2B lead generation

Tool Stack

Postman (APIs)LinkedIn

📋

Overview

🔍 Project context	Managed direct lead generation partnerships responsible for approximately 33% of total consumer loan leads across the Netherlands and Belgium markets. These partnerships with premium comparison sites and brokers offered price comparison services for personal loans and revolving credit products, while providing valuable market insights during fluctuating interest rates.
💡 Approach	• Identifying and securing high-quality direct partners in competitive financial markets • Navigating complex technical integrations between systems • Standing out on comparison platforms where decisions are heavily price-driven • Ensuring compliance with financial regulations while maintaining commercial objectives • Managing partnership expectations across different comparison sites and brokers
🚀 Key Achievements	• Acquired partners and established relationships with key financing market players in the local markets like brokers and comparison platforms • Negotiated and maintained commission structures for sustainable business growth for parties involved • Established technical integrations, coordinating among in-house and partner teams to implement

👨‍💼

As the lead owner for this channel, I took full responsibility for the entire partner lifecycle:

Outreach and Business Development: Identified and performed targeted outreach to acquire new partnership opportunities with premier financial comparison platforms
Commercial Negotiation: Structured and negotiated performance-based commission agreements tailored to different partner categories
Technical Implementation: Coordinated cross-functional teams for successful integrations, serving as the primary liaison between technical stakeholders
Reporting and Performance Management : Facilitated data pipelines to share reporting of lower funnel data of partners with daily exports, tending to different needs of the partners (SFTP / APIs), in collaboration with data and IT teams
Compliance: Ensured all partner marketing activities adhered to regulatory requirements in both Dutch and Belgian markets

📊

Account-Based Marketing Approach: Identified and targeted high-value comparison platforms such as Geld.nl, Independer, TopCompare, and De Nederlands Krediet Collectief and more through personalized outreach campaigns via LinkedIn and e-mail
Value Proposition: Worked with Product team to ensure reasonable value propositions (in terms of pricing and ‘loan purposes’) for different partners based on their unique market positions
Partner onboarding: Created partner onboarding documentation and co-marketing assets to improve time-to-market
Events and networking: Represented Santander at industry events to build new relationships among potential industry partners

Integration Oversight: Served as the primary Santander representative during technical implementations with major platforms like Geld.nl and Independer
API Support: Facilitated data exchange between Santander's systems and partner platforms, ensuring seamless application flow
Cross-Team Coordination: Bridged communication between IT departments to resolve integration challenges and implement technical requirements
Documentation Development: Reviewed and improved technical integration guides tailored to different partner technical capabilities based on integration experiences
QA: Assisted with testing protocols to validate data integrity across the application journey

💡

Premium Partner Acquisition: Successfully onboarded market-leading comparison platforms such as Geld.nl, Independer, TopCompare, De Nederlands Krediet Collectief and others in NL and BE markets
Channel share and growth: Established and optimized a channel that consistently delivered approximately 20% of total online personal loan leads in Direct channel (initially around 5%)
Conversion Optimization: Improved partner channel conversion rates through technical integration refinements, review generation on partner sites, and UX flow advisory to partners
Cost Efficiency: Achieved optimal cost-per-acquisition at profitable RORWA through strategically negotiated commission structures aligned with customer LTV

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