NATIXIS -2020 Universal Registration Document

FINANCIAL DATA Statutory Auditors’ report on the consolidated financial statements

Provisions for legal and compliance risks Risk identified and main judgments The Natixis Group is involved in litigation before the courts and is the subject of investigations and requests for information from regulatory and tax authorities in different jurisdictions. The assessmentof the resulting legal and compliance(including tax) risks reflects management’s estimates as of the reporting date. The recognition of a provision and determination of its amount as well as the information disclosed in the notes to the consolidated financial statements require, by their very nature, the exercise of judgment, not least because of the difficulty of estimating the outcome and financial consequences of ongoing proceedings. We therefore consideredprovisions for legal and compliance risks to be a key audit matter given the sensitivity of these provisions to the assumptions and options adopted by management. Provisions for litigation amounted to €714 million at December 31, 2020. Please refer to Notes 5.22, 6.8 and 7.16 to the consolidated financial statements for more details.

Our audit approach We examined the identification, assessment and provisioning arrangements for legal and compliance risks. We took note of the status of ongoing proceedings and the main risks identified by the Natixis Group, mainly through regular discussions with management (and more specifically Natixis Legal, Compliance and Tax Departments) and by reviewing the documentation made available to us. Our work also involved assessing the reasonableness of the assumptionsand data used by managementto estimate the amount of provisions recognized at the reporting date. In particular, we engaged tax law specialists to conduct a critical review of analyses of the tax risksidentified by Natixis and the related provisions. We also carried out confirmation procedures with the Group’s legal advisors regarding ongoing proceedings. Finally, we checked that the provisions thus measuredwere correctly recorded and verified the related disclosures in the notes to the consolidated financial statements.

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NATIXIS UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2020