Creating a sustainable business
SEB has a strong ambition to contribute to sustainable growth and to make a difference to customers, staff and the society at large. For us, it's of vital importance that we have close relationships and interact with all our stakeholders, also our suppliers.
We are convinced that having suppliers with high performance as regards environmental, social and ethical aspects creates greater values for us as well as for our suppliers. Sustainable business is about being here for the long run.
In our Supplier Code of Conduct we express the importance of having a sustainable supply chain and what we expect from our suppliers. The Supplier Code of Conduct, which is based on SEB's group-wide Code of Business Conduct, is fundamental to our sourcing process and is essential for our assessment of suppliers.
SEB is using EcoVadis sustainability monitoring platform for managing assessment and rating of our suppliers. The EcoVadis platform combines sustainability assessment expertise and data management tools which will allow for our suppliers to demonstrate their sustainability best practices. The target is to increase the average sustainability rating in the supplier community that delivers products and services to SEB.
The result from the monitoring will be used by SEB as an important input in the supplier selection, but also for measuring and developing current suppliers' sustainability performance. For current suppliers, SEB will identify the suppliers scoring the best results and promote the use of these suppliers. Top rated suppliers will be published on SEB's web page for Supply Chain Management. For suppliers that receive low rating, SEB will support the supplier in driving a positive development of the scoring, with the ambition to improve the rating year to year.
Process
The use of EcoVadis sustainability monitoring platform will be part of SEB's sourcing assessment. When SEB sourcing new services and products, suppliers with a yearly spend above SEK 500,000 will be assessed and rated on sustainability performance. Targeted groups of current suppliers to SEB, will also be assessed and rated. In total the supplier assessment will correspond to 80 per cent of SEB's yearly spend.
Suppliers will get an invitation from SEB to fill in the evaluation form on the monitoring platform. Suppliers with no EcoVadis rating, or low scoring suppliers, showing unwillingness of improvement, will in due time be excluded from SEBs sourcing activities.
Procurements
SEB bank purchases are accordant to the principles of sustainable business, taking into account environmental protection, social responsibility and ethical standards in the choice of partners. SEB bank Supplier Code of Conduct and Corporate Sustainability principles are taken into account during procurement process.
Information about SEB bank procurement projects is available in the electronic procurement platform Mercell.