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    Supplier diversity and inclusion

    Our strategy

    Our strategy promotes economic growth for our communities while unlocking greater value from our supply chain

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Our approach

Our supplier diversity and inclusion strategy promotes economic growth for our communities as well as unlocking greater value from our supply chain. We want to give back where we can, whilst promoting sustainability and making sound business decisions.

What we’re looking to achieve

  • The ambition of our strategy is to promote positive impacts through embedding ‘best in class’ supplier diversity practices for our communities and clients as well as unlocking greater value throughout our supply chain.
  • Our strategy is a Bank wide programme to generate greater diversity in our supply chain. We have established initiatives, processes and opportunities for diverse businesses to participate equally.
  • We are also ensuring the larger non-diverse suppliers we work with have strong diversity and inclusion records and embrace supplier diversity in their supply chains.
  • We have aligned our supplier diversity to Standard Chartered’s wider business culture and purpose, reinforcing our valued behaviours.

What this means in practice

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Together we can make a difference

  • We are seeking to identify and work with a more diverse range of suppliers reflecting the communities we work in, for instance, businesses with minimum 51% ownership by diverse individuals or groups.
  • We are growing relationships and spend with existing diverse suppliers.
  • We are ensuring the suppliers we work with have strong diversity and inclusion records and are aligned to our supplier diversity ambitions, principles and practices. By doing so, we seek to foster supplier diversity beyond Standard Chartered ‘boundaries,’ helping to ensure wider economic and social impacts.
  • We are simplifying our processes as we want to make it easier to work with us and remove any blockers of complex systems and processes.
  • We are committed to supporting and developing diverse suppliers through coaching, mentoring and outreach programmes.
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How we are enabling our strategy

  • We are building internal capability to deliver supplier diversity and inclusion objectives globally through extensive training of our supply chain teams and wider business stakeholders. 
  • Our strategy will be enabled by local implementation plans. These local plans and objectives will be aligned to the core aims of the strategy, but will take into account local cultures and legislation.
  • We know each market is different and will have their own ideas for getting the strategy off the ground.
Working from home in a COVID-19 world

In summary

We are focused on making changes in buying habits with an increased understanding of the benefits of a diverse and inclusive supply chain.

We know it’s important to continue challenging ourselves and to become leaders in this area.

We are resetting expectations with all of our suppliers, for example, in terms of the diversity of teams that turn up to pitches and for performance of contracts. 

By actively thinking about who we work with and why, we can make sure we are Here for Good.

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