Happy fifth anniversary, ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management Systems!

ISO 37001 ABMS 5th Anniversary

Today is the ISO 37001 ABMS fifth anniversary since it’s approved internationally and available for organisations of all types to adopt and implement this standard. Five years ago, on October 14, 2016, the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) published the new standard, focused on helping organisations fight bribery and corruption and ensure compliance with anti-bribery anti-corruption controls. This newly launched ISO 37001:2016 Anti-Bribery Management System (ABMS) standard focused on specifying requirements and providing guidance for establishing, implementing, maintaining, reviewing and improving organisations’ anti-bribery management systems.

The standard’s requirements “are generic and are intended to apply to all organisations (or parts of an organisation), regardless of type, size and nature of the activity, and whether in the public, private or not-for-profit sectors“, and this helped ISO 37001 ABMS to become popular between its supporters and critics. Some regulatory bodies and compliance communities initially expressed concern regarding the lack of a body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of ISO 37001:2016 from particular standpoints. Critics asserted that the new standard failed to address broad compliance concerns and questioned whether ISO 37001:2016 certification alone could prevent bribery and prosecution. These observations should undoubtedly be weighed and considered, as any new compliance standard must be appropriately evaluated on its merits. However, in the case of ISO 37001, the critics have made some misjudgements regarding the key factors they feel are in question with the standard.

It has been an exciting journey for ABAC® and its team of outstanding professionals around the world.  Listening to our clients’ stories, experiences on how bribery is a huge issue in their countries and having endless discussions about if this standard would help them, ABAC® is pleased to say it has been five highly successful years to all of them.

Internationally recognised standard

The standard mirrors numerous steps in the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act 2010 and other primary legislation. After its launch, the standard has become the critical go-to tool for organisations willing to prevent bribery and corruption inside and outside their businesses effectively. Since ISO 37001 plays a pivotal role in demonstrating “adequate procedures” as featured in international and local legislation, global organisations started to recognise the benefits of achieving this certification to ensure they have these processes and procedures in place. After implementing the standard in their compliance and risk management systems, organisations also can:

• Ensure that your organisation is implementing a viable anti-bribery management system using widely accepted controls and procedures.
• Give your company the tools it needs to prevent bribery and mitigate related risks.
• Assure management, investors, business associates, personnel and other stakeholders that the organisation actively pursues internationally recognised and accepted processes to prevent bribery and corruption.
• Help your company create new and better business partnerships with entities that recognise your certified status, including supply chain manufacturing, joint ventures, pending acquisitions and co-marketing alliances.
• Potentially reduce corporate insurance premiums.
• Provide your customers, stakeholders, employees and partners with confidence in your business operations and ethics
• Provide a competitive edge over non-certified organisations in your industry or niche
• Provide acceptable evidence to prosecutors or courts that the organisation has taken reasonable steps to prevent bribery and corruption

ISO 37001 certifies that your organisation has implemented reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent bribery. These measures involve top-level leadership, training, bribery risk assessment, due diligence adequacy, financial and commercial controls, reporting, audit, and investigation.

An invaluable component of anti-bribery, anti-corruption, compliance and risk management strategies

The first step of demonstrating your organisation’s commitment to implementing an effective anti-bribery management system is to commit to ISO 37001 training and certification. Consider ISO 37001:2016 ABMS as one of the invaluable tools of your Third-Party Risk Management Strategy. Combined with due diligence, background screening, business intelligence and compliance solutions, ISO  37001 certification and training can lift your risk management process and help your business mitigate risks from third-party affiliations, protecting your organisation from liability, brand damage and harm to the company.

ISO 37001 is also compatible with another internationally recognised standard, ISO 37301 Compliance management system. It covers all compliance-related issues, including anti-trust, fraud, misconduct, export control, anti-money laundering, and other unexpected risks which might affect your business. While ISO 37301 provides organisations with guidelines for implementing appropriate measures to prevent, detect and monitor compliance, it does not explicitly lay out the requirements needed to address bribery and corruption – ISO 37001 ABMS does. Our fully equipped auditors and analysts work with your team in benchmarking the compliance and anti-bribery management systems by all international standards. Both certifications help the organisation and its top management, compliance officers, risk managers, internal and external auditors, and all related personnel to work together towards implementing adequate measures to prevent non-compliant behaviour – adopting certification and training in these standards adds the extra security level to your risk management strategies and helps to ensure the 360-degrees compliance management.

Achieving ISO 37001 certification

To offer you ISO 37001 training and certification, CRI Group launched an Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption (ABAC®) Center of Excellence. This independent accredited certification body operates through its global networks of certified ethics and compliance professionals, qualified auditors, financial and corporate investigators, certified fraud examiners, forensic analysts and accountants with diversified backgrounds. Providing a robust anti-bribery and anti-corruption program increases your company’s protection from unethical behaviour. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Learn more about the ISO 37001 certification today.

What do ISO 37001 certified clients say?

It’d been quite an exciting journey working on ISO 37001 ABMS since 2016. In celebrating its fifth anniversary, ABAC would love to share our client remarks on being certified.