Exiger Announces New CRO Christian Woodward

Modern Slavery in Global Supply Chains: Essential Tools for Transparency and Compliance

February 5, 2025

Article

Executive Summary

Gain Supply Chain Visibility and Eliminate Modern Slavery Risks

As global regulations on modern slavery grow stricter, multinational
corporations face increased pressure to ensure transparency and
compliance in their supply chains. Noncompliance can lead to financial
penalties, reputational damage, and operational disruptions. Exiger’s platform offers a risk-illuminated knowledge graph, leveraging proprietary and open-source data to map supplier networks down to the raw material level. This advanced technology and automation can transform supply chain risk management, enhance due diligence, and drive proactive compliance in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

Introduction: Understanding the Compliance Landscape

Modern slavery remains a persistent and urgent global challenge, with millions of individuals trapped in forced labor conditions across industries and supply chains. Governments worldwide are taking decisive action, enacting stringent regulations against forced labor that mandate corporate accountability and ethical sourcing. Companies that fail to comply risk severe financial penalties, supply chain disruptions, and lasting reputational harm.

Yet, achieving compliance is no simple task. Organizations face significant barriers, including limited visibility into sub-tier suppliers, inconsistent data, complex jurisdictional requirements, and operational constraints. Traditional compliance tools often fall short, leaving companies vulnerable to regulatory violations and supply chain vulnerabilities.

To combat these challenges, businesses must embrace next-generation solutions that provide deep, data-driven insights into supplier relationships and material sourcing. Exiger’s AI-powered platform offers end-to-end supply chain transparency, proactive risk identification, and automated compliance workflows, helping organizations navigate the evolving modern slavery landscape with confidence.

This article explores major compliance challenges with modern slavery regulations and the technological innovations that empower companies to achieve ethical, transparent, and resilient supply chains.

Challenges in Complying with Modern Slavery Regulations

While there has been increasingly more robust and strict legislation passed to prevent modern slavery in supply chains, much of the technology for organizations to identify and eradicate modern slavery from their supply chain has not followed suit. This has led to a series of challenges faced by global organizations today.

Data Accuracy and Transparency

Mapping and visualizing your supply chain network is imperative. Risk often lies not just at the direct supplier level but also indirectly within Tier 2, Tier 3, and beyond. Having a solution that allows you to visualize these networks and their relationships allows stakeholders to understand underlying supply chain risks involved, which is important for determining areas for improvement.

Visibility Gaps

Limited sub-tier supplier traceability: Many organizations lack visibility beyond Tier 1 suppliers, making it difficult to identify high-risk entities or regions deeper in the supply chain.
Fragmented and inconsistent data: Supplier data is often incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, complicating efforts to create a reliable supply chain map.
Lack of standardized reporting: Without universal reporting standards, collecting comparable and actionable information from suppliers becomes a significant hurdle.

Regulatory Complexity

Overlapping and evolving requirements: Modern slavery regulations differ significantly by jurisdiction, with frequent updates that make compliance challenging for global organizations.
Jurisdictional incompatibility: Conflicting requirements across countries (e.g., different definitions of forced labor and documentation standards) complicate the compliance process.

Operational Risks

Supply chain disruptions: Detentions of goods under regulations like the UFLPA or EU Customs controls can lead to significant delays and operational bottlenecks.
High cost of remediation: Investigations to rebut presumptions of forced labor, such as proving the absence of forced labor in materials from Xinjiang, are resource-intensive and require extensive documentation.
Increased risk of noncompliance: Failure to act swiftly on flagged risks can lead to unintentional violations, jeopardizing business continuity.

Data Accessibility and Integration Challenges

Siloed systems: Many organizations operate with disconnected data sources, leading to inefficiencies in gathering and analyzing risk information.
Inadequate technological tools: Traditional tools are insufficient to handle the scale, complexity, and dynamics of global supply chain risk, limiting an organization’s ability to act on real-time insights.
Delayed information flows: Inconsistent updates or delays in receiving supplier information make it challenging to assess risks proactively.

Resource Constraints

Lack of expertise: Many organizations do not have in-house expertise to navigate the intricacies of modern slavery regulations effectively.
Limited budget allocation: Compliance initiatives often compete with other priorities, leaving insufficient resources for robust due diligence programs.

Emerging Challenges

ESG integration requirements: Modern slavery compliance is increasingly tied to broader ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) criteria, adding another layer of complexity.
Dynamic global risks: Political, economic, and climate-related risks can exacerbate vulnerabilities in supply chains, further complicating compliance efforts.

Overcoming Challenges with Modern Slavery Regulations

Exiger is the only platform capable of drawing a comprehensive knowledge graph that represents not only every supplier and third party in your supply chain but also a complete map of your products down to the raw materials. The platform combines comprehensive, proprietary data, advanced AI technology, real-time monitoring, and scalable, automated workflows to address modern slavery challenges effectively.

Complete Visibility of Risk, Entities, and Products – Without the Noise

Holistic View of Relevant Risk

Visibility means nothing if you’re not seeing the complete picture, but often more data brings irrelevant information. Our entire platform sits upon a risk model that is comprised of proprietary and open-source data alongside comprehensive data providers to create the largest forced labor and supply chain data network in the world. Our risk model is finely tuned to only surface relevant risks giving you a comprehensive view of risks you know are important and, with our proprietary data, finds modern slavery risks that are in the blind spots of other platforms. Organizations can tailor the risk model to fit their requirements and risk appetite. It’s the best of both worlds: the most data available with none of the noise.

Exiger’s risk model combines seven risk dimensions with detailed granularity and multidimensional focal points, empowering organizations to uncover hidden risks and make precise, proactive supply chain decisions.

Evidenced-Based Sub-Tier Mapping for Entities and Products

One of the largest pitfalls for organizations complying with modern slavery regulations is the lack of understanding of what raw materials and components are being sourced in the sub-tiers of their supply chain, where those are sourced, and who they are sourced from. Many lack the available technical data from sub-tier suppliers to have the level of visibility needed to address modern slavery concerns in their supply chain.

Exiger can efficiently extract, categorize, and organize parts and materials data, even when technical data is limited or unavailable. This automation enhances the accuracy and speed of supply base mapping, reducing manual effort, reducing false positives, and minimizing errors.

For scenarios where technical data is available, Exiger’s AI-powered ingestion capabilities allow large volumes of data to be processed rapidly and effectively. This enables organizations to fully leverage detailed product and component specifications, ensuring that the correct suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors are mapped to specific products, components, and materials within the supply chain.

This comprehensive view of your supply chain enables you to:

Map your entire supplier ecosystem
Create evidenced-based BOMs down to the raw materials
Monitor supply chain changes in real time to react proactively to emerging threats

Exiger’s evidence-based Bill of Materials mapping connects supplier risk and supply chain data, to uncover hidden modern slavery risks and map the criticality of the associated supplier(s) in your supply chain.

Exiger identifies sub-tier modern slavery risks that are missed by other solutions that only use watchlists or other structured data. Here, Exiger is not only flagging a modern slavery association with this tier 2 supplier but illuminating the nature of the relationship by detailing shipments, dollar value, and timeframe to give more insight for better decision making.

Drill Down to Raw Materials

A common misunderstanding is that supply chain visibility ends at the part or component. When it comes to eliminating modern slavery risks, companies should instead prioritize visibility to see where raw materials are sourced, whether it is the second or the fifth tier. Statistics show that only about 2% of supply chain executives can see beyond the second tier, and very few companies have true visibility into how materials flow at the fifth tier. Not only is this vital to avoiding detentions and seizures of shipments, but it’s important evidence to be presented in case of enforcement actions for UFLPA and other regulations.

Combining the comprehensive map of your supply chain and Exiger’s real-time intelligence and data creates a risk-illuminated knowledge graph down to the raw materials. This knowledge graph enables you to:

Trace raw materials to their origins to identify high-risk regions or entities linked to modern slavery.
Monitor supply chain changes in real time to react proactively to emerging threats.
Identify alternative suppliers to shift away from those in regions associated with modern slavery.

Exiger generates an evidence-based BOM to map your supply chain down to raw materials, uncovering hidden modern slavery associations and enabling proactive compliance with regulations like UFLPA.

Assess Supply Chain Links to Regions Associated to Modern Slavery

Many regulations require you to review your list of vendors and vendor partners to see links to modern slavery. While you could manually check the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) UFLPA Entity List to see if any of your partners or vendors are linked to the area, this will not provide a full picture of their partners’ and vendors’ activities. This lack of transparency poses a risk to ensuring your supply chain complies with the UFLPA and other modern slavery regulations.

Exiger replaces manual review of volumes of disparate data sources. It also provides visibility into each tier of a company’s supply chain, allowing risk management analysts to identify where points in a supply chain may be linked to forced labor. Exiger combs through billions of records related to an entity to surface where your suppliers and their suppliers may harbor potential risks. If any of your suppliers are linked to high-risk areas, you will need to conduct thorough due diligence and, potentially, remediation.

Exiger’s equips you to:

Trace raw materials to their origins to identify high-risk regions or entities linked to modern slavery.
Monitor supply chain changes in real time to react proactively to emerging threats.
Identify alternative suppliers to shift away from those in regions associated with modern slavery.

Automated Due Diligence to Uncover Modern Slavery Risks

Exiger’s automated due diligence capabilities enable organizations to uncover hidden risks of modern slavery at scale, providing comprehensive insights into supplier practices and compliance.

Exiger’s platform delivers automated due diligence at scale with key features that include:

Deep Due Diligence: Exiger’s due diligence technology uses natural language processing to conduct extensive reviews of suppliers across structured and unstructured data to identify modern slavery risks with the precision of a human researcher at the speed and scale of AI.
Adverse Media and Watchlist Screening: Continuous monitoring of global media, sanctions, and watchlists identifies suppliers linked to forced labor, human rights violations, or ESG concerns, flagging them for further investigation.
Risk Prioritization and Scoring: AI-driven tools assess supplier risks by analyzing financial stability, geographic location, and labor practices, ensuring resources are focused on the highest-risk entities.
Cross-Jurisdictional Insights: Exiger aligns supplier reviews with global regulations, including UFLPA, the UK Modern Slavery Act, and the German Supply Chain Act, ensuring seamless compliance across jurisdictions.

Streamline Investigations and Evidence Collection

Risk is not a point-in-time event and requires real-time monitoring. The platform automates the collection of attestations from suppliers, ensuring that critical compliance data — such as certifications, policies, and adherence to ethical standards — is gathered efficiently and consistently.

Key features include:

Automated supplier audits and surveys to collect necessary compliance data.
Dynamic workflows to generate and manage rebuttal documentation for detained goods under regulations like UFLPA.
Automated gathering of compliance documentation, such as attestations, certifications, and contracts, creating a defensible audit trail for regulatory requirements.
Regular refreshes and real-time monitoring ensure you’re always staying ahead of changes in your supplier community.

Proactive Risk Posture and Early Risk Mitigation

A proactive risk posture enables organizations to anticipate and address emerging risks, reducing vulnerabilities before they escalate into operational or reputational crises. Exiger’s comprehensive risk management tools help businesses shift from a reactive to a proactive stance by providing predictive insights, advanced monitoring, and actionable mitigation strategies.

Exiger’s platform empowers organizations to stay ahead of risks with key features that include:

AI-Driven Predictive Analytics: Exiger identifies early warning signs of high-risk suppliers or regions, such as financial instability, ESG violations, or geopolitical threats, enabling timely interventions.
Continuous Real-Time Monitoring: The platform continuously tracks supply chain risks, including forced labor allegations, adverse media reports, and economic disruptions, ensuring up-to-date visibility into potential vulnerabilities.
Scenario Planning and Risk Simulation: Tools like Supply Chain Explorer allow organizations to model the impact of potential disruptions, such as trade restrictions or material shortages, and prepare mitigation strategies in advance.
Alternative Supplier Recommendations: Exiger provides pre-vetted, compliant supplier options to mitigate the impact of flagged entities and ensure business continuity.

screenshot from Exiger dashboard with map diplay and risk assessments by category — Exiger's dashboards are tailored to your organization’s needs and offer insights into modern slavery risks across key dimensions, enabling proactive interventions through predictive analytics and real-time monitoring.

Exiger screenshot showing a list view of risk flags — Exiger suggesting alternative suppliers. Exiger’s scenario planning and modeling enable organizations to quickly identify alternatives and prevent disruptions when modern slavery risks with critical suppliers are uncovered.

As modern slavery regulations tighten and scrutiny on supply chains intensifies, organizations need innovative tools and actionable insights to meet compliance and eliminate risks effectively.

Ready to see how Exiger can revolutionize your supply chain transparency and compliance efforts? Request a demo today and discover how Exiger’s cutting-edge tools can help you eliminate modern slavery risks, protect your reputation, and ensure resilience in a complex global landscape.

More Resources: