Fighting corruction and money laundering

Intesa Sanpaolo is committed to contributing to the fight against corruption, supporting the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Guidelines, and the anti-corruption principles established by the United Nations, also through the  adoption of a “zero tolerance” approach. Intesa Sanpaolo internal policies also establish that political parties and movements may not be recipients of donations and sponsorships.

With regard to the fight against money laundering, the Group has also adopted a stricter approach, going beyond what is required by the regulations, providing for assessments of greater diligence from a credit and reputational point of view in order to avoid its involvement, for any reason whatsoever, in transactions with counterparties or countries subject to embargo measures, even when the transaction would fall within those covered by the restrictive measures issued by international authorities. The Group's Guidelines on the matter, constitute a systematic and functional reference framework, based on the principle of active cooperation by the Group in preventing such illegal activities.

 UN SDG SUPPORTED

On 21 April 2022, Intesa Sanpaolo’s Board of Directors approved an update to the Group's Anti-Corruption Guidelines, in order to require that market conditions are not applied to social and/or cultural initiatives, establishing principles of conduct and control that are similar to those applied to charities.

In compliance with the regulatory provisions of the legislator and the sector supervisory authorities, and based on the international standards contained in the FATF (International Financial Action Task Force) Recommendations, the Group has adopted procedures, instruments and controls designed to mitigate the risk of being involved, even unknowingly, in cases of money laundering, terrorist financing, embargo violations and arms regulations.

Training is mandatory and follows multi-year cycles, also according to local regulations.

The actions on Governance evolution concerned Reporting, Stress testing, Product Governance, while those on the ESG framework focused on the methodologies for ESG Scoring of the Parent Company and Eurizon and on ESG impacts on credit granting and funding process.

The actions on risk areas also considered aspects and implications connected to ESG areas and compliance with the principles and values of the Code of Ethics.

In 2022, Intesa Sanpaolo obtained renewal of the UNI ISO 37001:2016 Anti-bribery management systems certification, with an expansion of the scope which includes Intesa Sanpaolo - with its international branches - the banking entities, and the main financial and insurance companies. The certification will be valid until May 2025, subject to two maintenance audits in 2023 and 2024.