Christine Palmer

Chief Risk Officer at Santander UK

Speaker

Christine Palmer is the Chief Risk for Santander in the UK and has extensive experience in the financial services sector following a career spanning over 30 years. Christine joined Santander in 2020 from Aldermore Group, a specialist lender operating in the UK, where she was an executive director and Group Chief Risk Officer for the holding company, banking and consumer car finance businesses. After graduating from the University of Wales, Christine started her career at ABN Bank where she undertook a variety of roles in credit risk. In 1991, Christine joined ING, where she spent eight years in a variety of risk management roles in both London and Amsterdam. Before joining RBS in 2002, Christine held a consultancy role at Ernst & Young, where she focused on credit risk management in the Financial Services Risk Management practice. At RBS, Christine held many senior roles within the bank including Global Head of Operational Risk & Divested Businesses as well as Chief Risk Officer roles for the Group’s Non-Core Division and its UK Corporate & Commercial Bank. During her career Christine has successfully navigated complex, scale and global businesses as well as faster growing new banks all of which have experienced significant transformation and challenging environments. She has accountability for the second line activities of the Risk & Compliance functions within Santander UK and is also a Board member of Cater Allen and Santander Consumer Finance UK as well as being the executive sponsor for the Bank’s REACH Network which supports colleagues from different race, ethnicity and cultural/religious backgrounds. She has been recognised externally for this in 2023 being included in top 50 InVolve Empower Advocates for executives creating a more diverse and inclusive environment and shortlisted for European Diversity Awards 2023 – Inspirational Role Model.