Standard Bank Group has partnered with US-based technology platform, FRDM, via the Group’s OneHub platform, to help corporates assess and address environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks within their supply chain.
The solution will help companies build transparent, ethical, and sustainable supply chains, further increasing the attractiveness of African businesses and expanding their participation in global supply chains.
FRDM is a machine learning platform to algorithmically highlight ESG risks throughout global supply chains at a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches. It is trusted by a number of multinational corporations, with Standard Bank as its exclusive partner in Africa.
Supply chains are under increasing scrutiny from regulators, investors and customers. Regulators are requiring companies to monitor and mitigate environmental and social risks in their supply chains. Investors are also asking companies to address social justice and sustainability through their operations. Furthermore, customers have higher expectations of companies to address ESG concerns.
“Companies are increasingly aware that it is not enough to only work with their tier-one suppliers and that transparency down the line is critical, we’re excited to bring clients this solution that will strengthen their supply chains by identifying any risks with sub-tier suppliers, all the way to source”, says Joel Buatre, digital portfolio lead: corporate and investment banking at Standard Bank Group.
Through providing FRDM with basic information on their suppliers’ names, locations, industries and the products supplied, Standard Bank’s corporate clients will get visibility into sub-tier suppliers and be able to identify and address ESG risks in their supply chain. From there they are able to track their impact at all levels of the supply chain.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us how broken and opaque supply chains truly are. Supply chain operations and oversight has lagged far behind the innovation curve. Companies today are expected to solve bigger and deeper problems in their supply chains such as environmental and human rights risks,” says Justin Dillon, CEO and founder of FRDM.
FRDM works by:
* Organising all supplier and spend data.
* Creating a predictive bill of materials for everything the client buys and applying insights about environmental, social and business continuity risks.
* Helping the client engage with suppliers using its toolkit to reduce risk and increase client resilience.
* Producing impactful reports for the client team, stakeholders, and regulators.
* Helping the client track improvements to its supply chain and constantly improving its resilience.
FRDM is available on OneHub, a single point of entry for Standard Bank’s corporate clients and partner organisations to connect and interact. The platform allows clients to discover and procure digital tools and services developed by the bank and its trusted network of partners.
Along with FRDM, this platform provides access to partners such as, iiDENTIFii, which enables the banks corporate customers to biometrically identify and verify the individuals they are doing business with, and AUTHENTIFI, an intelligent data solution designed to assist businesses enhance risk management, optimise cost and efficiencies, and improve cashflow and collection success ratios.