Businesses, including financial institutions are facing increasing pressure to identify and manage their exposure to all environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk, including those relating to environmental crime, financial crime and IWT. Understanding the ESG risks that are financially material to your business and your investments has an impact on long term business success. Your IWT response should therefore not just form part of your Anti-Financial Crime related controls but should also be an integrated and key part of your overall ESG strategy.
ESG issues are relevant to the entire business, from greater diversity in the workplace, to climate disclosures, ESG issues have an impact on the success of the business today and tomorrow.
Firms recognise IWT as an environmental crime and build their response into their ESG strategies as well as their financial crime frameworks.
Tackling IWT is also part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 14 Life Below Water and SDG 15 Life on Land).
IWT is treated both as an environmental crime and a predicate crime for money laundering and therefore included in both a firm’s wider ESG strategy and Financial Crime framework.
Organisations publicly report their progress on their commitments and Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) tackling the IWT - either on their websites, impact or annual reports.
