This week, Western Union was recognized by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, as a Most Ethical Companies Honoree. As a first-time honoree, Western Union was one of only eight honorees in the financial and payment services industry.
Why it matters: The integrity of global money movement is a key pillar of Western Union’s Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) strategy. Serving customers across complex regulatory environments at a global scale requires dedication to compliant and ethical practices. We are firmly committed to enabling an effective, accountable, and transparent global financial infrastructure that protects individuals and empowers society to realize its full potential. Being recognized on this index demonstrates that our commitment to operating ethically and compliantly is being acknowledged by the broader business community.
Western Union’s culture of ethics and compliance: The culture we have built serves as a foundation across our organization. It underpins our employees’ ability to serve customers across the world, and our customers’ trust in us to move money for them reliably and securely. Our commitment to the integrity of global money movement defines our brand and drives our success.
Our Ethics Program: At Western Union, we are committed to living our Company’s values by creating a trustworthy and respectful culture and supporting a diverse and inclusive workplace. Our Culture of Ethics and Compliance shapes how we engage with each other and how we conduct business. I am especially proud of our employees who live our values every day. This honor and our success as a company belongs to our employees.
Methodology & Scoring: Grounded in Ethisphere’s proprietary Ethics Quotient®, the World’s Most Ethical Companies assessment process includes more than 200 questions on culture, environmental and social practices, ethics and compliance activities, governance, diversity, and initiatives to support a strong value chain. The process serves as an operating framework to capture and codify the leading practices of organizations across industries and around the globe. This year, Ethisphere recognized 136 honorees that spanned 22 countries and 45 industries.
Ethisphere’s 2022 Ethics Index, the collection of publicly traded companies recognized as recipients of this year’s World’s Most Ethical Companies designation, outperformed a comparable index of large cap companies by 24.6 percentage points over the past five calendar years.
The outperformance, which Ethisphere refers to as the “Ethics Premium,” has remained consistent since Ethisphere began tracking the performance of honoree companies.
To learn more, visit our Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) 2020 Report. You can also look out for Western Union’s fourth annual Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report, detailing our efforts to combine strong stockholder value with good corporate citizenship, which will be released in June.
