CEO Jason Kulas Splits From Santander After 10 Years

Santander Consumer USA’s President and Chief Executive Jason Kulas is stepping down “effective immediately” in order to “pursue other opportunities,” ending his 10-year run with the company, the board announced in a press release today.

Kulas will be replaced by Scott Powell, chief executive of Santander Holdings USA (SHUSA) the subsidiary of Spanish parent bank Banco Santander. He will retain both titles as well as his position as Santander Group’s U.S. country head, the release stated.

The change in leadership is not shift in strategy for Santander Consumer, a spokeswoman told Auto Finance News and as Powell said during a quickly convened shareholders call this morning.

“I know the team well as part of the process of forming the strategy for the company and the key initiatives that we’re working on,” Powell said during the call. “It’s a strategy that the team here has been working on as well as the team in Boston for the past few years. The focus has been bringing stronger risk management to bare, building out our consumer practices and compliance, and building a customer focused culture.”

Powell has been spending time in Santander Consumer USA’s Dallas office every other month while commuting from SHUSA’s Boston office, but his time in the Lone Star State will increase in the new role, he said.  

“Santander Consumer is the biggest, most important part of Santander U.S., and as the SHUSA CEO I spend a lot of time with the team here,” he said. “There will be more pulls on my time, and I’ll be spending more time [in Dallas] but it’s hard to say how much.”  

Although Powell emphasised that his leadership will be a continuation of Santander’s current strategy, he did highlight the lender’s efforts to strengthen its partnership with Chrysler Capital. Santander Consumer USA signed a flow agreement with its parent bank Banco Santander earlier this year, in order to increase its prime loan penetration at Chrysler. Having one person in charge of all U.S. operations could prove useful for that agreement, an analyst on the call speculated; however, Powell stopped short of saying whether or not Santander Consumer would be absorbed into SHUSA.

“There have been a variety of things we have been aligning across the U.S.: Aligning accounting practices, aligning compliance, aligning a whole lot of things,” he said. “Until we had the intermediate holding company come in, all these companies in the U.S. were acting as separate companies, so what we’re doing across the U.S. is bringing these companies together, operating at the same standard, and finding ways to operate more effectively across Santander U.S.”

Powell also added that he has a lot of respect for Kulas and that the company wishes him well in his future endeavors.

Kulas joined SC in 2007 as chief financial officer after covering the company as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He became president in 2013, and added the title of chief executive in 2015 after Tom Dundon stepped down from the role.

Since becoming president, Kulas has led the company to $34.1 billion in auto outstandings, up from $23.7 billion in 2013, according to Big Wheels Auto Finance 2017. However, his tenure

was also marked by a number of regulatory consent orders starting in 2015 for which the company is still dealing with.

Powell was appointed CEO of SHUSA in 2015 and has served on Santander Consumer USA’s board of directors since 2016, the release stated. His experience in risk management has helped form SC’s current strategy, and he also served as CEO of Chase Auto Finance from 2005 to 2007.  

“Scott’s depth of experience makes him the right person to continue SC’s evolution and to sustain its long-term performance,” Santander Consumer USA Chairman Bill Rainer said in a press release. “Scott’s role as both SHUSA CEO and SC CEO will position SC to grow, to strengthen its commitment to customers, and to progress toward operating at major financial institution standards.”