HANDELSBANKEN PLC modern slavery statement summary (2025)

Organisation address

3, Thomas More Square,
London,
United Kingdom,
E1W 1WY

We asked the organisation a series of questions about its modern slavery statement. Its answers are published on this page as a statement summary.

This statement provides information for all 6 recommended areas

What is a modern slavery statement?

UK law requires certain organisations to publish an annual modern slavery statement on their website, setting out the steps they are taking to address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. Read more in the government guidance on publishing modern slavery statements.

Link to full statement

Go to full modern slavery statement on organisation’s website

PDF version of the statement

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Handelsbanken Modern Slavery statement 2024.pdf

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About this statement summary

All answers relate to the financial year covered by the statement. The organisation is responsible for all the information it provided. Some of our questions are optional, so organisations may not have answered all of them. The statement summary does not replace the full modern slavery statement – below we provide a link to the full statement on the organisation’s website.

Contents

Organisations covered by the statement

HANDELSBANKEN PLC modern slavery statement for 2025 is a group statement covering 2 organisations. See the full list of organisations covered by this statement

Legal requirement to publish

HANDELSBANKEN PLC has confirmed it is required to publish a 2025 statement by law.

Statement period and sign-off details

The statement covers the following period:
1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024

The statement was signed off by:
Mikael Sørensen (Chief Executive Officer)

It was approved by the board (or equivalent management body) on:
19 May 2025

Recommended areas covered by the statement

Government guidance encourages organisations to cover a range of areas in their modern slavery statements, setting out the steps they’re taking to address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. Read about the recommended areas in the statutory guidance.

We asked the organisation to tell us which areas its statement covers.

Areas recommended by government guidance	Organisation’s response
The organisation’s structure, business and supply chains	Covered
Policies	Covered
Risk assessment	Covered
Due diligence (steps to address risk)	Covered
Training about modern slavery	Covered
Goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of the organisation's actions and progress over time	Covered

The organisation’s sectors and turnover

Sectors

The organisation operates in the following sectors:

• Financial, insurance and real estate activities

Turnover

Its turnover in the financial accounting year of this statement was:

Over £500 million

If the organisation is a public body, this amount is based on the organisation’s budget for the year of the statement.

What does 'turnover' refer to in group statements?

If this is a group statement, this includes the total turnover for all the organisations covered by the statement.

Number of years producing statements

The organisation has been producing modern slavery statements for the following number of years:

More than 5 years

How does this work for group statements?

If the statement is for a group of organisations, this answer applies to the organisation with the longest history of producing statements.

Policies (optional)

We asked the organisation whether its policies include the following provisions in relation to its domestic and international supply chains, as well as its own operations.

Policy provisions we asked about	Organisation’s response
Freedom of workers to terminate employment	Included
Freedom of movement	Included
Freedom of association	Included
Prohibits any threat of violence, harassment and intimidation	Included
Prohibits the use of worker-paid recruitment fees	Included
Prohibits compulsory overtime	Included
Prohibits child labour	Included
Prohibits discrimination	Included
Prohibits confiscation of workers' original identification documents	Included
Provides access to remedy, compensation and justice for victims of modern slavery	Not included
Other	Not included

Training (optional)

We asked the organisation whether it provided training on modern slavery, and who it was for.

What counts as training?

We explained that by ‘training’ we meant anything designed to increase knowledge and skills around identifying, addressing or preventing modern slavery risks. This could range from formal training courses to broader awareness-raising activities such as workshops or webinars.

We asked who the training was for	Organisation’s response
Your whole organisation	Yes
Your front line staff	Yes
Human resources	Yes
Executive-level staff	Yes
Procurement staff	Yes
Your suppliers	No
The wider community	No
Other	No

Monitoring working conditions (optional)

Engaging with others

We asked the organisation to tell us who it engaged with to help monitor working conditions across its operations and supply chains.

Organisation’s response

The organisation told us it did not engage with any of the people we asked about during the period of the statement.

Social audits

We asked the organisation to tell us about any social audits it used to look for signs of modern slavery.

What are social audits?

A social audit is a review of an organisation’s working practices from the point of view of social responsibility, and should include an evaluation of working conditions in the organisation’s operations and supply chains. By their nature, audits of supplier workplaces represent a snapshot in time.

Organisation’s response

The organisation told us it did not carry out any social audits during the period of the statement.

Grievance mechanisms

We asked the organisation how workers in its operations or supply chains could raise concerns or make complaints.

We asked if workers could raise concerns this way	Organisation’s response
Using anonymous whistleblowing services, such as a helpline or mobile phone app	Yes
Through trade unions or other worker representative groups	Yes

Other ways of monitoring working conditions

We asked the organisation whether it had any other ways of monitoring working conditions across its operations and supply chains:

Organisation’s response

The organisation did not answer this question.

Modern slavery risks (optional)

Identifying modern slavery risks is a vital step towards eradicating it. The government encourages organisations to be as open and transparent as possible, to improve understanding, collaboration and best practice around tackling this worldwide problem.

We asked the organisation to describe up to 3 priority risks it focused on during the period of the statement, including details of the affected workers, the activity involved, and the location.

Priority risks for this organisation (1 of 3)

We focus on 3 areas in our statement Firstly those colleagues working in our own operations, those based either in our Head office locations or our branch network

Questions we asked about this risk	Organisation’s response
Where it was most likely to occur	Organisation’s response: Within your own operations.
Who was it most likely to affect	Organisation’s response: Women
In which country	Organisation’s response: United Kingdom
Actions or plans to address this risk	Organisation’s response: Further expand on our modern slavery training, beyond the mandatory training, so that colleagues can recognise and respond to modern slavery risks. Enhance the information our branch colleagues have available to support their conversations with customers about modern slavery and the Real Living Wage. Explore further KPIs, including customer engagement. Collaborate with other organisations, industry groups and government agencies to share best practice and improve efforts to combat modern slavery

Priority risks for this organisation (2 of 3)

secondly we focus on workers in our supply chains and in particular high risk sector categories of suppliers such as Construction, cleaning and Facilities Management

Questions we asked about this risk	Organisation’s response
Where it was most likely to occur	Organisation’s response: Within your supply chains. Tier 1 suppliers Provide their products and services directly to your organisation.
Who was it most likely to affect	Organisation’s response: Women Migrants Refugees Children
In which country	Organisation’s response: United Kingdom
Actions or plans to address this risk	Organisation’s response: Conduct and annual review of our Supply Chain ESG strategy Continue the Bank's onboarding plans to EcoVadis including our subsidiary Continue onboarding new suppliers to Hellios FSQS for due diligence Enhance our Supplier Code of Conduct Carry out a Risk assessment on our subsidiary's supply base Continue to build capability and knowledge Explore opportunities to streamline our supply base Develop a new set of targeted assessment questions for cleaning suppliers

Priority risks for this organisation (3 of 3)

Thirdly we focus on risks working with our Customers of the Bank and help our colleagues to spot the signs of victims or perpetrators of the crimes

Questions we asked about this risk	Organisation’s response
Where it was most likely to occur	Organisation’s response: Organisation selected ‘Other’ and wrote: Within our Customer base
Who was it most likely to affect	Organisation’s response: Women Migrants Refugees Children vulnerable groups such as disabled or with learning difficulties
In which country	Organisation’s response: United Kingdom
Actions or plans to address this risk	Organisation’s response: Establish a small working group of Branch colleagues to support customer focused initiatives Provide enhanced information to Branch colleagues on modern slavery when onboarding customers Further enhance our indicators for vulnerable customers Support branch colleagues with deeper dive webinars on the red flags of modern slavery Work with Business customers to support their sustainability goals

Indicators of forced labour (optional)

We asked the organisation whether its statement refers to finding any International Labour Organization (ILO) indicators of forced labour.

What are ILO indicators of forced labour?

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has produced a list of the most common signs of forced labour. They’re based on the definition of forced labour as ‘all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.’ More details and guidance are available on the ILO website, and in their publication ILO indicators of forced labour

Organisation’s response

The organisation told us its statement does not refer to finding any International Labour Organization (ILO) indicators of forced labour.

Demonstrating progress (optional)

We asked the organisation how its statement demonstrates progress over time in addressing modern slavery risks. They provided the following answer:

Every year we outline how we have made progress against our commitments in the year previous and we set new goals for the year ahead. We also track a number of key KPI's to measure each year