Modern Slavery Statement
Statement Against Modern Slavery 2024
Introduction
Cerillion and its subsidiaries (“Cerillion”) are committed to treating all employees and workers with respect and dignity, ensuring they can exercise their human rights and have safe working conditions.
This Statement explains how Cerillion complied with its obligations under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act during the financial year 2024 (1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024).
Cerillion is committed to playing its part to help combat and prevent slavery and human trafficking, as detailed below. Cerillion is also committed to ensuring its internal processes enable both our organisation and supply chains to be free from slavery or human trafficking, including forced labour and child labour.
Cerillion Structure, Business Operations
Cerillion was founded in October 1999 following the management buyout of the in-house Customer Care and Billing product division of Logica. Cerillion became a public company by listing on the AIM market on 18 March 2016 and is subject to the UK City Code on Takeovers.
Cerillion plc is the parent company and has one wholly owned subsidiary; Cerillion Technology Limited (“CTL”) with its registered office at 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES, United Kingdom.
CTL meets the reporting requirements contained in the UK Modern Slavery Act.
CTL is the main operating company. CTL has four subsidiary companies: Cerillion Technologies India Private Limited (“CTL India”), Cerillion Technologies EOOD in Bulgaria (“CTL Bulgaria”), Cerillion Inc in the USA and Cerillion Technologies PTE. LTD. in Singapore.
CTL India and CTL Bulgaria employ skilled staff to provide software support services and critical fixes to issues arising in our software to customers around the clock, as well as assisting in software implementation.
CTL also has a presence in Australia, Portugal, Belgium and Malta.
CTL is a provider of software solutions focusing mainly on providing billing, charging and customer management systems to B2B customers across the world. CTL now delivers a broad range of cloud solutions (SaaS), managed services and on-premise enterprise software. CTL currently has c. 80 customer installations in c. 45 countries.
As of, 1 January 2025, CTL employed 348 employees, of which 101 are based across the United Kingdom, 212 are based across India and 30 are based across Bulgaria. The remaining employees are based in other countries.
Risks of Modern Slavery Practices in Our Business Operations and Supply Chain
Business Operations
Cerillion considers the risk of modern slavery in its business operations to be low.
1. Recruitment
We are committed to ensuring that we and any external recruitment agencies we use have clear and fair recruitment policies and procedures and that no one has to pay directly or indirectly any fees to work for us.
As an inclusive employer we ensure that we treat all those working for us fairly.
1.1 Using agencies
(a) Our Human Resources department only uses agreed, specified, reputable recruitment agencies with whom we have a written contract in place.
(b) To ensure the potential for slavery and human trafficking is reduced as far as possible, we thoroughly check recruitment agencies before adding them to our list of approved agencies. This includes:
(i) extensive interviews with the agency to understand their work ethics and policies in place;
(ii) conducting background checks; and
(iii) investigating reputation such as reviews and case studies.
(c) We keep agents on the list under regular review, at least every 12 months.
1.2 General recruitment
The Cerillion Human Resource department comprises of a small team, and they play a very hands-on role in the hiring process from start to finish.
(a) We always ensure that prior to starting work, all staff have a written contract of employment describing their work, in an appropriate language, and that they have not had to pay any direct or indirect fees to obtain work.
(b) We are committed to only hiring employees that are authorised to work in accordance with applicable employment laws in the country in which they are located, including immigration and working age requirements, and we have processes in place to mitigate risks of non-compliance.
(c) We check the names and addresses of our staff and their right to work.
(d) We provide information to all new recruits on their statutory rights including sick pay, holiday pay and any other benefits they may be entitled to.
(e) All new recruits (included those employed via an agency) go through an onboarding programme to ensure they are aware of our strategy, vision, values, policies and procedures.
Given that the majority of our employees are skilled professionals, we believe that the risk of modern slavery practices and the vulnerability of our workforce is low. Furthermore, we have systems and processes in place to track working hours. Despite this diminished risk, we are committed to respecting human rights in our workplace and have a number of policies and processes in place to promote a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace, including, but not limited to, Cerillion’s Discrimination, Harassment and Bullying Policies.
2. Training
Cerillion delivers training for all its employees on a range of compliance issues and proactively encourages growth and self-skills development. Training is compulsory for both existing and new employees. Given the low level of risk in its supply chain and recruitment process, training specific to modern slavery, including forced and child labour, has not been implemented for the 2024 financial year. Cerillion intends to keep under review whether such training will be required for employees in the future.
Supply Chain
Cerillion is a provider of software solutions and as such our supply chain is limited to procuring hardware and complementary software (on occasion) from globally recognised and reputable third-party providers. Cerillion does not manufacture technology hardware. We assess the risk of modern slavery occurring within our supply chain to be low.
In coming to this assessment, Cerillion has considered the nature of its supply chain, their legal obligations and compliance, the characteristics of our supplier’s business and our engagement with our suppliers.
Although Cerillion has no reason to believe that there is a high risk of modern slavery and human trafficking, including forced and child labour, within its business’s supply chain, Cerillion has procedures in place that will be adapted and strengthened as necessary.
Conclusion
Cerillion is committed to its responsibility to respect human rights across all its business operations.
For purposes of compliance with the Modern Slavery Act, this Statement was prepared after consultation with CTL. The consultation involved requests for information and discussions across the Legal, Procurement, Finance and the Human Resources teams in CTL.
This Statement was reviewed and approved by Cerillion plc and is signed by an authorised Director.
Date: 10 February 2025
Louis Hall: Chief Executive Officer