Global Quality Certification

Banco Santander Central Hispano SA
27 December 2000


Aenor grants Banco Santander Central Hispano the first ISO 9001 quality
certification, in its 2000 version, for all its activities and processes in
Spain.


                    BANCO SANDTANDER CENTRAL HISPANO, THE 
                    FIRST BANK IN THE WORLD TO OBTAIN THE 
                        GLOBAL QUALITY CERTIFICATION

The Spanish Association of Normalisation and Certification (Aenor) has granted
Banco Santander Central Hispano the ISO 9001 2000 certification for all its
activities and processes, both internal as well as external, that it carries out
in Spain.

This global certification is the first one issued by Aenor under its recently
published UNE-EN ISO 9001 regulations for 2000. This is a major development,
given the Bank's size and the speed with which it has fulfilled the requirements
of the new international regulations on systems of quality.

Achieving the certification is one of the Bank's strategic goals in the area of 
quality for 2000. This consists of documenting all the processes and activities
in Spain, according to ISO international rules, setting standards of provision
based on customer needs and measuring and improving productivity.

A total of 94 certificates, issued by Aenor, an independent institution,
underscore the high level of the Bank's quality model in more than 2,500
processes which cover daily activity with customers, employees, shareholders and
suppliers. In short, it is a commitment to quality with everyone with whom the
Bank works and to the society to whom it provides its services.

The new ISO regulations in the 2000 version, which are more demanding than the
last ones (1994), emphasise customer satisfaction as the key indicator of
quality and continuous improvement as the company's permanent objective. Both
criteria are explicitly part of the quality model that the Group is implementing
in all those markets where it operates.

This certification is one more step towards fulfilling our mission of providing
the best service to our clients wherever they may be, whatever distribution 
channel they use and in all networks and brands.

Madrid, December 27 2000