Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 530

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 530
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 by drawing up action points, adapting our strategy to maintain solvency levels and considering our more vulnerable customers due to the macroeconomic environment and some specific events.

Risk reporting structure

In order for senior management to have a complete and up-to-date view of the risk profile for proper decision-making, we report recurrently and in a consolidated manner on current and future risks. Reporting is comprehensive and dynamic, adapts to needs, and prioritizes all significant risks in a timely and appropriate manner.

Our reports cover every risk included in our corporate risk framework, with all necessary considerations for their proper risk assessment. They also provide a consolidated view of all risks, maintaining the quality and consistency of information according to our corporate data framework.

Our risk reporting structure continues to strike a balance between data, analysis and qualitative commentary, incorporating forward-looking measures, risk appetite information and limits, emerging risks, and other elements.

We continue to enhance our reporting with simpler, automated processes and tighter controls that adapt to new needs. In 2024, we continued to report and monitor all the impacts of ongoing armed conflicts and natural disasters; escalated cases of risk from macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility; and paid close attention to every emerging risk that could have a direct or indirect impact on the Group. Moreover, we adapted reporting by embedding the global businesses to be consistent with the Group’s strategic objectives and round off the existing geographical view.

1.5 Internal control system

Our internal control system (ICS) comprises the risk and control procedures that the board of directors, senior management and the rest of our employees perform as part of scheme of individual responsibilities. Its aim is to provide reasonable guarantee regarding the operational efficiency; the reliability of financial and sustainability reports; and compliance with internal policies, by acting responsibly and covering every process across the organization (business, risk and support areas).

Our ICS is consistent with the most demanding international standards and follows the guidelines set out by the Committee of Sponsoring Organisations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). We base it on these principles:

• Tone at the top: the board of directors oversees the ICS's integrity, while senior management sets an appropriate ICS. Both groups work to raise awareness of the ICS's importance, especially in new initiatives (transformation projects, regulatory compliance, and others).

• Risk Control Self-Assessment (RCSA): it is where we identify, document and assess the ICS’s risks and controls to measure — dynamically and proactively — the likelihood and exposure of each operational risk related to our targets once