What is Supervision of conduct?
20/05/2025
One of the supervisory activities of the Banco de España is to verify that financial institutions offer their clients a fair, transparent and in accordance with regulation and standards of conduct in the provision of banking and payment services. This function is called Supervision of conduc and, in recent years, the Banco de España has been evolving in dimension and depth, with the aim of achieving a change in the culture of the entities that promotes a relationship model that takes more into account the interests and needs of its clients.
But this, how is it achieved?
For this purpose, a risk-based approach is followed, that is, it is intended to avoid the possibility that banking activity generates damage to the rights and interests of its customers. For this reason, the sector, the business models and the activity of the institutions are continuously monitored, maintaining continuous communication with them, both to anticipate possible risks and to transmit to them the expectations and supervisory criteria of the Banco de España on the relevant issues. All this contributes to the development of a culture among financial institutions that is more customer-oriented and focused on transparency.
In addition, supervisory actions are carried out in which the Banco de España verifies that, in addition to complying with the established laws and regulations, financial institutions provide clear and understandable information to their clients and integrate the appropriate treatment of their clients into their business models and control.
In this way, each year specific subjects on which the actions are focused are selected. For example, 85 supervisory actions were carried out in 2024 reviewing aspects such as the implementation of codes of practice, co-marketing of products, new digital banks, customer services, controls on card and digital payment fraud and commercial communication policies. As a result, a penalty procedure was initiated and 72 letters of formal notice were submitted, of which 53 corresponded to a request for cessation or rectification of advertising pieces and 19 to requests from other areas. In addition, 72 letters with recommendations and clarifications were sent.
All of the above helps to gain a deeper understanding of market practice and identify best practices, correcting, where appropriate, any weaknesses and deficiencies that could have been detected, which is in the interest of consumers.
To improve the development of this function, in 2024 a committee of independent experts of recognised standing carried out an external evaluation of the conduct supervision function of the Banco de España, the details of which can be found at the following link.Abre en ventana nueva
To know more, you have at your disposal the Monitoring ReportAbre en ventana nueva, which collects information on supervisory actions carried out year after year in all areas of supervision.
“Disclaimer: Please note that this is a translation of the original in Spanish that has been obtained using eTranslation (the machine translation tool provided by the European Commission), with the intention of giving you a basic idea of the content in English until a human translation becomes available. The Banco de España accepts no liability whatsoever in connection with this translation.”
