Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 918

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 918
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 oversight which could adversely affect our business, operations and financial condition.

As a financial institution, we are subject to extensive regulation, which materially affects our businesses. In Spain and the other jurisdictions where we operate, there is continuing political, competitive and regulatory scrutiny of the banking industry, including banking practices, products, services and pricing policies. Political involvement in the regulatory process, in the behaviour and governance of the banking sector and in the major financial institutions in which the local governments have a direct financial interest, and in their products and services and the prices and other terms they apply to them, is likely to continue. Accordingly, the statutes, regulations and policies to which we are subject may be changed at any time. In addition, the interpretation and the application by regulators of the laws and regulations to which we are subject may also change from time to time. Extensive legislation and regulation affecting the financial services industry has been adopted in regions that directly or indirectly affect our business, including Spain, the US, the EU, the UK, Latin America and other jurisdictions, and further regulations are in the process of being implemented. The manner in which those laws and related regulations are applied to the operations of financial institutions is continuously evolving. Moreover, to the extent these regulations are implemented inconsistently in the various jurisdictions in which we operate, we may face higher compliance costs. Any legislative or regulatory actions and any required changes to our business operations resulting from such legislation and regulations, as well as any deficiencies in our compliance with such legislation and regulation, could result in fines, significant loss of revenue, limit our ability to pursue business opportunities in which we might otherwise consider engaging, limit our ability to provide certain products and services, affect the value of assets that we hold, require us to increase our prices and therefore reduce demand for our products, impose additional compliance and other costs on us or otherwise adversely affect our businesses. In particular, legislative or regulatory actions resulting in enhanced prudential standards, in particular with respect to capital and liquidity, could impose a significant regulatory burden on us or on our subsidiaries and could limit the bank subsidiaries’ ability to distribute capital and liquidity to us, thereby negatively impacting us. Future liquidity standards could require us to maintain a greater proportion of assets in highly-liquid but lower-yielding financial instruments, which would negatively affect our net interest margin. Moreover, regulatory and supervisory authorities periodically review our allowance for loan losses. Such regulators and supervisors may recommend that we increase our allowance for loan losses or to recognize further losses. Any such additional provisions for loan losses, as recommended by