Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 147

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 147
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 top management and members of the management bodies of the subsidiaries that make up Grupo Santander — must be aware of and comply with. Available on our corporate website for all stakeholders to read, it is in force in every Group subsidiary. It includes a message from our Executive Chair on the importance of having a solid and common corporate culture that all Santander employees are on board with. Subsidiaries’ versions also have a message from their local CEO. The GCC’s core implementation mechanisms are: i. Mandatory training for employees on the GCC through an annual course that instils the guidelines they must follow in their day-to-day to prevent possible risks, such as the Group’s penal responsibility; how to handle conflicts of interest according to our policy, 72 and what to do if they receive gifts and invitations from people outside Grupo Santander. We supplement GCC training with a statement that reinforces our employees’ pledge to comply with it. ii. #YourConductMatters: Campaigns via email, Intranet and other media to boost employees’ awareness of the GCC, as well as of Canal Abierto and the latest whistleblower protection laws. iii. The Compliance area, which deals with employees’ queries on the enforcement of the GCC. iv. Canal Abierto, our whistleblowing channel where employees and stakeholders can report violations of the GCC and of our corporate behaviours.

v. Breaches to the GCC are managed and sanctioned in accordance with applicable regulations. Our risk appetite metrics include monitoring of employees’ completion of mandatory training on the GCC. Every quarter, we gather completion data for every unit, which currently stands at 99,1% at December 2024. Thus, there is no requirement to put remediation plans in place. Moreover, mandatory training forms part of our employees’ annual performance review, which acts as an incentive to complete it in due time. We also use another management metric to identify how many incidents reported to the Group’s ethical channels are linked to violations of the GCC.

| For more details, see section7.2 ‘Compliance and conduct risk management’in the ‘Risk management and compliance’ chapter. |

4.2.2 Responsible taxation The Group’s tax strategy is consistent with our business strategy. Our principles of action in tax matters, which apply to all our entities, must align with our purpose of helping people and businesses prosper and with our aim to be the best open financial services platform by acting responsibly and earning the lasting loyalty of our employees, customers, shareholders and communities. The board of directors approves our tax strategy