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Procurement and Suppliers

Procurement and Vendor Management (PVM) is Rabobank’s central purchasing department and the key point of contact for our suppliers. We provide guidance across the entire procurement process of introducing suppliers: from market scan and selection, to negotiations and finally to executing contracts. Respect and integrity are critically important to Rabobank during this process. This is something we ask not only from ourselves but from our suppliers as well. Establishing these partnership values early on, sets everyone up for success. Along with these values we also encourage suppliers to operate in a sustainable and socially responsible manner that’s in line with Rabobank’s vison and policy.

Working with PRISMA

We use the system PRISMA to work with our suppliers in a transparent, quick and efficient way. PRISMA is our Partner Risk and Management Application that ensures a high quality standard for our Supplier and Source-to-Contract management processes. (Personal) data exchanged and processed through PRISMA are always sufficiently secured.

Will you be working with us? Then you will automatically receive an e-mail from Rabobank with an invitation to register in PRISMA and accept the terms of use. Read more about PRISMA and how to register as a supplier here.

Sustainable Procurement

Rabobank sees sustainability as a condition for future prosperity. That is why Rabobank wants to contribute to solutions that benefit everyone. We expect the same from our suppliers. We believe it is important that the parties we work with carry out their activities fairly, with integrity and respect for people and the environment, across their entire value chain.

The Rabobank Sustainability Policy Framework provides clarity on Rabobank's policy in the area of sustainable procurement.

Sustainability rating

In all of our procurement processes, we as PVM ask our clients what requirements they want to set for the supplier(s). We then screen our potential suppliers on sustainability. This is process is managed through an independent party that provides us with insight into the sustainability performance of (potential) suppliers compared to their branch benchmarks on the four themes:

    environment labor & human rights ethics sustainable procurement

This results in a score that is taken into account in the choice of the suppliers we ultimately choose to work with. We also ask all of our suppliers to include Rabobank's Sustainability Statement in the contract. This declaration includes how Rabobank intends to contribute to sustainability, not only through its own initiatives, but also through its suppliers. The statement includes Rabobank's acceptance and exclusion requirements of its suppliers. For energy and soft-service contracts, the extended statement applies.

Supplier Management

At Rabobank, we expect our suppliers to provide products and services that are safe and meet the latest requirements in the area of information security. Suppliers also have to (help) comply with the rules and requirements that Rabobank must adhere to in the Netherlands according to regulators and authorities, such as the De Nederlandse Bank (DNB), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Banking Authority (EBA). Rabobank acts in accordance with the guidelines set by the regulators. Therefore, Rabobank uses standard contracts that comply with these rules and requirements in every procurement process. In addition, we actively work on Supplier Risk Management across these focus areas:

    We assess corruption risks. We check for (the appearance of) conflicts of interest. We check the financial stability of our suppliers. We assess the risks associated with the supply of a service or product and examine the measures to reduce possible risks.

A complete overview of which risk assessments we carry out and how we deal with (personal) data can be found in our Code of Conduct and in the Overview Risk Assessments.

E-invoicing

Our objective is to process the invoices we receive from suppliers electronically as much as possible. That is why Rabobank uses e-invoicing. For us, e-invoicing is a step towards a more sustainable procurement process, as less paper is used and e-invoicing is safer, more efficient and faster than pdf invoicing.

Read more about how e-invoicing works and what the benefits are here.