Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 419

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 419
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 we provide customers in rural Spain access to basic financial services through our branches, ATMs, network of financial agents in communities with under 10,000 inhabitants and Correos Cash in areas that might otherwise have been left unattended. In 2024, we extended the Correos Cash agreement to offer cash access with a non-digital solution through rural letter carriers.

Santander is also committed to ensuring and promoting financial inclusion in vulnerable customers through different initiatives such as our microfinance programmes in Latin America (Prospera in Brazil and Colombia, Tuiio in Mexico and Surgir in Peru). We also signed several agreements with Multilateral Development Banks in countries such as Chile, Brazil and Poland where these agreements include allocating part of new portfolios to social finance. In Spain, we helped customers with financial difficulties to access credit (e.g., loans for a first home for young people) or those impacted by the rising cost of living or natural disasters (e.g., the floods that affected Valencia in October 2024), among others.

Additionally, we have a cross-functional team that has been working on enhancing services for our elderly customers, including measures such as extending the hours of counter/teller services and creating senior ambassadors to make sure senior citizens receive the best possible service. We also continued to promote financial education with specific content through our financial education programme, Finanzas para Mortales. Our commitment to financial education through this programme directly impacted senior citizens, people with disabilities, people in vulnerable situations and school children, among others.

• We also support our communities through programmes to help them address their social needs. We focus our efforts on education, employability and entrepreneurship, in addition to financial education and support for vulnerable people. Moreover, we have a strong track record of backing cultural and other social initiatives. For more information, see the ' Sustainability sta tement ' chapter.

• For our shareholders , we delivered solid financial results in 2024 and met all our 2024 targets which we upgraded in July 2024.

Once again, we achieved an all-time high attributable profit, reaching EUR 12,574 million in 2024. This was supported by revenue growth (+10% year-on-year in constant euros), better efficiency (41.8% in 2024) and profitability improvement (RoTE of 16.3% in 2024). At the same time, we maintained a solid balance sheet with sound credit quality (cost of risk was 1.15% in 2024) and capital ratios (fully-loaded