One of Europe’s largest banks, Banco Santander, and tech giant IBM have announced an agreement to accelerate the bank’s development of technologies such as blockchain. The news was announced in a press release published on Feb. 13.

The five-year global technology agreement is reportedly aimed at enhancing the financial institution’s services using emerging technologies — such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data — provided by IBM.

The deal between IBM and the largest financial and credit group in Spain is reportedly valued at approximately $700 million. The move aims to reduce the bank’s annual costs on IT spending and “significantly enable Santander Group to evolve towards the open, flexible and modern IT environment it requires,” the press release notes.

David Soto, IBM General Manager for Santander Group, was quoted in the press release as saying:

"Santander Group is leveraging IBM technologies to support their security and regulatory work, and to rapidly develop new services that meet emerging customer demand by tapping into IBM's unique technology and industry expertise."

As Cointelegraph reported last summer, Banco Santander created a blockchain research team, dubbed the “Digital Investment Banking” team, to explore the potential of blockchain tech to change securities trading and other financial instruments.

As Cointelegraph reported this week, IBM recently partnered with pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim to deploy blockchain in clinical recordkeeping.