Responsible Investing

Modern slavery can take many forms, including forced labour, child labour, domestic servitude, sex trafficking and human trafficking.

There are more people in slavery today than at any other point in history, and it occurs in every country globally – not just in the developing world.

Any company that profits from using forced labour is doing so illegally. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it isn't happening. In fact, the total profits obtained from the use of forced labour in the private economy worldwide is estimated to be around US$150 billion per year.²

Aside from the huge impacts on society and, of course, those individuals involved, modern slavery has negative repercussions for companies and future development. At CFS, we believe modern slavery has no place in society and we all share the responsibility to eradicate it as a matter of priority.

Our Statement reaffirms our commitment to addressing modern slavery risk within our sphere of influence and outlines the ways in which we identify, manage and mitigate modern slavery within our direct business operations, supply chains and investments.

Key activities delivered in FY25 include:

• We’ve continued to enhance the scope and assessment processes for our modern slavery risks, utilising third-party environmental, social and governance (ESG) data, reviewing modern slavery statements of our service providers and working with a third-party risk advisory group to uplift our third-party risk management framework;

• Where FairSupply³ has identified heightened modern slavery risk relating to a service provider, we’ve undertaken additional due diligence involving action plans developed to further analyse and monitor for instances of modern slavery;

• We’ve continued our relationship with our stewardship service provider EOS at Federated Hermes, which enables active ownership for our global equity investments, including a focus on modern slavery and human rights;

• We’ve continued to engage and share learnings with peers through collaborative groups, including the Responsible Investment Association Australasia’s (RIAA) Human Rights Working Group and Investors Against Slavery and Trafficking APAC (IAST APAC); and

• We’ve enhanced the modern slavery working group to involve greater representation from across CFS to uplift engagement on how CFS manages, assesses and mitigates modern slavery risks in our business operations, supply chain and investments.

View our statement

1. https://www.walkfree.org/reports/global-estimates-of-modern-slavery-2022/

2. International Labour Organisation

3. Fair Supply is the ESG date base which CFS uses to assess modern slavery risk of our service providers.