Disclosure and Transparency

We value opportunities to communicate our initiatives, policies, operations, financial performance, and goals with all of our stakeholders. We believe that maintaining an on-going dialogue with our stakeholders is essential in ensuring their active engagement with the Bank and that providing them with timely, balanced, and understandable information is integral, as well, to fulfilling our role and responsibilities as a global financial institution.

We aim to continually enhance our disclosure and transparency levels. We work to improve the usefulness of information so that it matches the different needs of stakeholders. More importantly, we also carefully consider the varied and increasing degrees in granularity of disclosures required by developing market practices and greater regulatory focus on specific areas of the business. Consequently, we strive to present the Bank’s disclosures in a way that is more informative to its audience and adds value beyond minimum standards and requirements.

We also recognize our continuous disclosure obligations under the Philippine Stock Exchange Listing Rules and to the Securities and Exchange Commission under the 2015 Securities Regulation Code ("SRC"). As a publicly-listed company, our corporate actions are required to be disclosed to these two bodies. Corporate actions are approved by the Board of Directors and/or Executive Committee. Any corporate action is disclosed by the Bank's Corporate Secretary or the Investor Relations Unit in accordance with the minutes of the meeting of the Board or the Executive Committee.

Key disclosure principles:

• The Bank is committed to providing clear, timely, accurate, and balanced disclosure of all material information about the Bank and to providing fair and equal access to such information. The Bank, however, treats all information pertaining to the company, business transactions and operations, products and services as strategic in nature. Therefore, the Bank, in the provision of its disclosures, shall safeguard its proprietary information and competitive position.
• The Board requires that management has processes in place to support its policy of full, comprehensive, understandable, and timely disclosure of financial results, significant developments, and other material information to both its internal and external publics, such as clients, shareholders, regulators, employees, suppliers, rating agencies, analysts, and stock exchanges.
• Required disclosures of market-sensitive information are coursed through the proper regulatory agency and also released to the public through various cost-efficient and appropriate modes of communication.
• Disclosures are to be consistent over time, unbiased, and comparable across the industry.
• In the disclosure process, the Bank is guided by internal governance, risk and compliance standards which serve to ensure information disclosure is in strict conformity with the Bank’s established rules and procedures to identify, assess, and mitigate any possible risks or damage which may be caused to the Bank, its counterparties, or partners as a result of any improper disclosure.
• The Bank shall also, at all times, give due consideration to matters related to the confidentiality of any information affecting clients’/counterparties’ interests. The Bank shall respect the rights of its clients/counterparties as related to the protection of confidential information.