Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 582

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 582
---
 a good customer relationship culture throughout the overall customer lifecycle (from design of products, sales, post-sales and in all engagement throughout a customer’s relationship with the Group) to protect consumers' rights and promote their fair treatment while managing and mitigating all potential conduct risks with them.

It also promotes a low reputational risk profile by defining criteria and controls to minimize risk that seek to prevent, mitigate and proactively manage stakeholder relationships within the Group.

A. Conduct risk

Customer conduct risk can potentially arise through failures in marketing processes, including product design (e.g. definition of target market and price), in sales (e.g. transparency and suitability) and post-sales (e.g. customer service and consideration of customers in special circumstances).

The first line of defence (i.e. business and its supporting functions), are responsible for identifying, mitigating, managing and resolving risks across all these phases and when dealing with customers. Compliance, as the second line of defence, advises the first line of defence of the global business and the local compliance teams on the implementation of the Group´s conduct risk management model and oversees the control environment and remediation plans, where applicable.

13 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

14 Common Reporting Standards

Annual report 2024 545

| Contents |     | Business model and strategy |     | Sustainability statement |     | Corporate governance |     | Economic and financial review |     | Riskmanagementandcompliance |

| Key elements of the conduct risk management model |     |                                                                                                                                     |     |                                                                                                               |     |                                                                                                                    |
|                                                   |     | Internal regulation and governance                                                                                                  |     | Oversight of key processes                                                                                    |     | Risk management                                                                                                    |
|                                                   |     | →Define principles and processes through a strong regulatory-based conduct risk management model.                                   
 →Oversee of local product governance forums and run the corporate one to mitigate conduct risk in the product and service approval. |     | →Our products and services meet customer needs.                                                               
 →Sales target the right markets with transparency, ensuring proper training, and customer-centric incentives. 
 →Our customer service and post-sale services are high-quality and fair.                                       |     | →Monitor results of marketing controls.                                                                            
 →Identify and assess risks using customer voice, risk management tools, and supervisory and sectorial information. 
 →Escalate issues and action plans.                                                                                 |

Our conduct risk model promotes basing our actions on customers’ interests, regulation, our values and our principles. That means driving a customer-centric culture throughout the marketing and