Santander Bank Polska pays a PLN 49.98 dividend per share – PLN 5.1bn in the year of the rebrand to Erste

Santander Bank Polska: PLN 49.98 dividend per share, PLN 5.1bn total payout – in the year of the rebrand to Erste

Santander Bank Polska is paying shareholders a dividend of PLN 49.98 per share – drawn from 2025 net profit and a portion of retained earnings from prior years. The total payout comes to PLN 5,107.4 million, or PLN 5.1bn – the third-largest dividend in the Polish banking sector in 2026, after PKO BP (PLN 7.68bn) and Pekao (PLN 5.2bn). At PLN 49.98 per share, it is one of the highest nominal dividends in WSE history. According to the bank's 2025 financial statements, net profit reached roughly PLN 6.48bn – up around 24% year on year (from PLN 5.21bn), providing solid cover for a payout of this size.

The distribution falls in the year of the bank's biggest ownership change in a decade – control passed from Spain's Banco Santander to Austria's Erste Group in 2025, and a full rebrand to Erste Bank Polska is under way in 2026. The cost of the rebrand (name, logo, a network of around 380 branches, marketing assets, digital infrastructure) is estimated at roughly PLN 250 million – and it has not affected the bank's ability to sustain its historically generous dividend policy.

Santander Bank Polska – a bank in ownership transition

Santander Bank Polska SA – a joint-stock company with KRS number 0000008723, headquartered in Warsaw in the Mazowieckie voivodeship – is Poland's third-largest universal bank by total assets (after PKO BP and Pekao), with around 5 million retail customers and a branch network covering the whole country. Its shares trade on the WSE under the ticker SPL (sector: commercial banking) and belong to the WIG20 index.

Since 2025 the shareholder structure has been defined by Vienna-based Erste Group Bank AG, which acquired the controlling stake from Spain's Banco Santander SA. It is the largest Polish banking transaction of the decade and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. The ownership chain is visible in the Beneficial Owners section of the KRS profile, pointing to the Austrian banking group as the controlling entity. A formal change of the company's registered name – from Santander Bank Polska SA to Erste Bank Polska SA – is also scheduled and will be entered in the register once the 2026 general meeting passes the resolution.

The third-largest WIG20 bank dividend

The PLN 5.1bn payout puts Santander Bank Polska in third place in the 2026 Polish banking dividend hierarchy – between Bank Pekao (PLN 5.2bn, PLN 19.77 per share) and Alior Bank (PLN 1.17bn). The sector leader, PKO BP, is paying PLN 7.68bn (PLN 6.14 per share). mBank, Poland's fourth universal bank, is paying no dividend in 2026 and has signalled a return to distributions only from 2027.

Together, the sector's four biggest dividend payers – PKO BP, Pekao, Santander and Alior – are distributing over PLN 19bn in 2026, a record in WSE history. Importantly for Santander Bank Polska's positioning, its PLN 49.98 per-share dividend is the highest nominal rate among WIG20-listed banks, even though the total payout is smaller than at its two largest rivals because of a smaller share count (around 102 million shares versus more than a billion at PKO BP).

Erste takes over, but the dividend stays the course

From the perspective of minority shareholders – pension funds, OFE, PPK schemes and retail investors – the key takeaway is that the switch of strategic owner from Spain's Santander to Austria's Erste Group does not alter the dividend framework. The Polish subsidiary's dividend policy remains a matter for its own general meeting resolutions, and the payout ratio (around 75% of profit) is comparable with prior years under the Santander brand. The chain of capital flows simply now leads to a different European strategic investor – from Madrid to Vienna.

“The change of owner from Santander to Erste should not have surprised minority shareholders – the Austrian group had signalled for years that it wanted to expand its Polish exposure, and the Polish subsidiary consistently generates one of the highest ROEs in the group. The PLN 49.98 per-share figure shows that Erste treats the Polish market as a source of stable cash flow for headquarters – and that logic will not change with the rebrand.”

The second thread is the scale of the rebranding cost – roughly PLN 250 million spread across 2025–2026 – which Erste has chosen to absorb despite the strong recognition of the Santander brand in Poland. It is a strategic signal: the new owner wants a clean break between the Polish subsidiary and the former Spanish group, building a unified pan-European identity (Erste already operates in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Serbia). The upshot: after 2026, Polish customers will no longer encounter the Santander brand – only Erste will remain.

What you'll find in the Santander Bank Polska profile

The Santander Bank Polska profile in our database carries the full KRS registry-event history – including the scheduled change of the company name to Erste Bank Polska SA, which will be reflected in the register once the general meeting resolution passes. The Beneficial Owners section shows the current ownership chain leading to Erste Group Bank AG (Vienna) – with the prior control by Spain's Banco Santander preserved as an archival entry. The Financial Statements section lets you track how net profit evolved over 2023–2025 (from PLN 4.83bn through PLN 5.21bn to roughly PLN 6.48bn) and how the CET1 capital ratio developed – a key metric for judging the bank's ability to maintain a high dividend policy after the rebrand as well.

Data: Strefa Inwestorów / Bankier – Santander Bank Polska announcement on the dividend from 2025 profit; Erste Group – investor relations following the 2025 transaction; KRS – current register readout and the scheduled change of company name; financial statements filed with KRS, as of 2026-07-27.