Regnier still works from home one to two days a week, and has been even more lenient with Santander’s 19,000 UK staff, with office-based workers only expected to be onsite two days a week.

“I don’t think it’s absolutely vital that people spend all five days a week in the office as they did pre-Covid,” Regnier says from his sixth-floor office near Euston station in London. “And, actually, had it not been for Covid, I wouldn’t have accepted this job, because I wouldn’t have wanted to be away from home five days a week in London. That wouldn’t have been good for the family or for me.”

This has helped Regnier, who is paid £3.3m to run the UK’s fifth-largest bank, gain a reputation as an “approachable” boss, according to a former colleague

Nobody should be paid that much but he's an outlier for the industry in allowing hybrid work at least.