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The SPW Supply Chain Story
WHY IS SUPPLY CHAIN A CRITICAL BUSINESS FUNCTION IN FINANCIAL SERVICES?
Whilst financial services organisations don’t face traditional supply chain risks, they do face exposure on a variety of levels – geopolitical risks, cyber-attacks, environmental and social risks, fraud, and so on – all of which can impact the smooth running of business. Having a visible supply chain is just as critical when the things being traded are knowledge, advice, and digital assets, as when they are physical goods.
A poorly managed supply chain ecosystem can quickly cause damage to reputation, loss of custom and bottom-line performance. Even a small exposure from a 5th party supplier can cause reputational damage, and if an FSI does not have complete real-time transparency and visibility over its entire supply chain ecosystem then unidentified material changes can breach regulatory and legal compliance.
Whilst digital data sets provide context, they can be limited in picking up nuances and tiny changes which could flag a potential risk. However, it’s a huge undertaking to gain deep understanding of suppliers proactively. Add to this the burden of fragmented systems, and the result is that companies can spend a huge amount of time undertaking highly-manual processes to stay on top of supply chain risks, including those posed by 4th, and 5th party suppliers, which in turn has a negative impact on the customer journey.
In the solving of all these issues, Schroders Personal Wealth (SPW) stands as an excellent illustration of how responsible supply chain management, harnessing best in class supply chain strategies and technologies, can be applied to the financial services industry. In fact, their approach is award winning, having been shortlisted for the Supply Chain Excellence Awards 2022.
A BIT OF BACKGROUND
Schroders Personal Wealth (SPW) began operating in 2019. The team had a very short 18-month window to build a resilient and sustainable supply chain ecosystem from scratch, one in which client information and adviser knowledge would flow through a seamless financial planning process.
MISSION CRITICAL VISIBILITY
Supply chain visibility is the ability to track every tier (3rd, 4th and even 5th parties) of the supply chain with the goal of improving and building resilience into the ecosystem. The best way to achieve complete supply chain visibility is by surfacing real-time insights into the activities and events occurring across suppliers, flagging risks quickly to mitigate interruption to business or damage to reputation.
SPW implemented FullCircl’s Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform to deliver the mission critical supply chain transparency they required.
THE FULL VIEW WITH CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE INTELLIGENCE
FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G)™ ingests billions of data points every day from a multitude of official and third-party sources. This intelligence is then matched and enriched to unlock the most accurate and contextualised view of every business in the UK and Ireland – giving an up-to-the-minute view of what SPW needs to know about any supply chain organisation, large or small. SPW is monitoring 366 3rd, 4th, and 5th party suppliers daily, including 160 suppliers that support its critical business process. Overnight this saved them ½ an FTE – and this saving has increased over time.
Layered over this rich real-time business intelligence is a rules engine customised to the unique visibility needs of SPW’s supply chain. SPW has defined 28 bespoke rules that speak to the specific risk triggers they need to investigate, including non-compliance with regulations, increased debtor days, directorship changes, UBOs, insolvencies, changes in credit score, Delphi score reductions, and potentially high-risk countries and/or industries. These enhance the team’s ability to process the information that matters at pace.
Custom alerts automatically notify SPW of any adverse media or other red flags. The intelligence SPW has received include cyber security alerts - a recent example of which was a critical 4th party fraudulent email replication attack – sanctions, modern slavery and dishonourable practices, as well as vital environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) triggers – a huge SPW workstream, as regulators and clients alike demand more accountability and transparency and increasingly expect financial service providers to create positive ESG change. A recent alert that increased revenue for SPW was a notification that a monitored company had won an award for investing in green cars; this opened the door to a deeper conversation.
FullCircl is innovative, agile, and easy to use. It doesn’t just sit in the background, it’s a daily interaction. FullCircl underpins our responsible sourcing ethos, ensures we adhere to regulatory and legal requirements, and minimises risk and disruption.
Rachel Donoghue, Senior Supplier Manager, SPW
BETTER BUSINESS, FASTER
SPW credits FullCircl with delivering a huge competitive advantage for its business, via an advanced ability to onboard and support suppliers quickly and efficiently. Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) contributes in no small measure to SPW achieving its strategic objective of providing more advice to more people
"Partnering with FullCircl was pivotal to enabling SPW to achieve Supply Chain Visibility", says Patricia Brassil Poole, Head of Sourcing and Supplier Management at SPW. “We have a mission control view over our entire supply chain ecosystem that allows us to quickly spot risks and collaborate with our suppliers as issues arise.”
Rachel Donoguhe, Senior Supplier Manager at Schroders Personal Wealth concurs. “FullCircl is innovative, agile, and easy to use. It doesn’t just sit in the background, it’s a daily interaction. FullCircl underpins our responsible sourcing ethos, ensures we adhere to regulatory and legal requirements, and minimises risk and disruption.”
Many of SPW’s suppliers have commented on the maturity of its supply chain process, and its ability to inspire empowerment. This will only continue to improve as SPW works in partnership with FullCircl to refine their rules and utilise further functionality such as its advanced reporting.
In closing Patricia comments: “FullCircl understands what we want to achieve and works in partnership with us to ensure we achieve it. We could not possibly have done this without them.”
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