Blythe Masters, the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, a blockchain company, succeeded Stephen Ferriss today as the non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. Santander is a holding company that specializes in consumer finance, focused on vehicle finance and unsecured consumer-lending products.
“Blythe Masters’ deep understanding of the financial markets and emerging bank technologies, coupled with her regulatory expertise, make her the right choice to lead the SCUSA Board,” said Jason Kulas, CEO of SCUSA, in a prepared statement. “She has a long track record as an innovator, which fits SCUSA’s entrepreneurial culture and our focus on using data and scalable technology to originate and service attractive consumer assets.”
Santander has been one of the more vocal banks on the ability for banks to save considerable amounts of money utilizing the blockchain. In The Fintech 2.0 Paper: Rebooting financial services, the authors argued that distributed ledger technology could save banks $15 billion-$20 billion per year by 2022.
The other new directors on the board are Jose Garcia Cantera, Victor Hill, Monica Lopez-Monis Gallego, Javier Maldonado, Robert J. McCarthy and William Rainer.
Before Masters joined Digital Asset Holdings as its CEO, she was a senior executive at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. as the head of its global commodities business from 2007 to 2014. Before that, she was chief financial officer of J.P. Morgan’s investment bank from 2004 to 2007. She is one of the many executives who have left traditional Wall Street firms for young, blockchain companies.