Mercuria CSR Report 2021 - Flipbook - Page 27
2021 Corporate Social Responsibility
with a third party. KYC checks help protect Mercuria from any involvement in activities that involve
fraud, money laundering, bribery, human-rights violations and other forms of crime and corruption . By
conducting thorough checks, we can mitigate the financial, reputational, regulatory and strategic risks
to Mercuria from other entities and ensure that all of our activities meet our expectation of conducting
business in a way that is safe for everyone and doesn’t result in any health, safety or environmental
impact to our people or the communities in which we work or our very special planet. Working
through our robust KYC process also provides a solid foundation for us to work most effectively and
collaboratively with our customers and partners.
Mercuria’s KYC procedures reflect the measured and conservative approach we apply to risk management
across our business. There are several dimensions to our KYC evaluation which is designed to provide us
with an understanding of a potential counterparty’s commercial strength and compliance standing, as
well as giving us an insight into how they fair against our high ethical standards when it comes to the way
they conduct business. The main objective of our KYC and screening procedures is to expose prospective
counterparties that have the potential to pose risk to our business or compromise our standards in any way.
Mercuria’s KYC methodology is under constant review to ensure that the latest international standards
are reflected in our procedures and opportunities to make improvements to our approach are continually
sought and implemented. We seek to utilise the latest technologies to enhance the way we review,
monitor, identify and flag high-risk counterparties and activities. This allows us to identify potential
risks accurately and in real time and before we enter into any business that would pose such risks.
Mercuria’s prudent approach to due diligence is also part of the process complements the Due Diligence
we routinely conduct prior to entering any acquisitions, making investments, or forming joint ventures.
The nature of our business means that we are often sourcing materials in areas that are affected by
conflict or other governance issues. We are acutely conscious of the challenges that can arise from this
and so have developed enhanced due diligence procedures which are applied to business dealings in or
around these higher risk jurisdictions. Special care is taken to regularly monitor Mercuria’s commodities’
supply chain to help ensure that Mercuria does not in any way contribute to human rights abuses,
violence or exploitation in conflict affected areas. Mercuria’s process as are designed to identify any
human rights breeches that may have already occurred or are under investigation. Our ongoing due
diligence provides assurance that any counterparties we work with are not the subject of legal sanctions
and ensures that we are not dealing in any sanctioned products.
Our due diligence and KYC practices extend beyond our counterparties to our contractors and service
providers also. These organisations are carefully considered before being selected to help us conduct
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