ISO 37001: Anti-Bribery Management Systems
What is ISO 37001?
ISO 37001:2025 is the second and latest edition of the international standard for Anti-Bribery Management Systems. This standard provides a robust framework for organisations to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve an anti-bribery management system (ABMS), with the aim of preventing, detecting, and responding to bribery in both public and private sectors to generate integrity and trust in business.The standard helps you to introduce and maintain specific measures that prevent, detect and address bribery across your organisation and your business activities.
This could include:
• Bribery activities conducted by your organisation• Bribery activities conducted against your organisation
ISO 37001 certification is applicable to businesses of all sizes in any country, regardless of your industry, and can be easily integrated into an existing management system such as ISO 9001, ISO 22301, ISO 27001 or ISO 44001, using the Annex SL common structure.
Bribery remains a significant challenge for organisations and governments globally. However, continuous efforts are being made to address this issue. The latest edition of ISO 37001 offers updated guidelines and requirements designed to help organisations enhance their anti-bribery measures and promote a culture of integrity.
The changes include:
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Stronger focus on integrity; and ethical behaviours and cultures within organisations.
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Ensuring clear procedures to manage conflicts of interest and support ethical decision-making.
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Enhanced guidance on leadership roles, emphasising their importance in implementing anti-bribery frameworks.
Gaining ISO 37001 certification
There are only a few certification bodies like NQA that can actually award the Anti-Bribery Management Systems certification, such is the rigorous nature of the audit and pre-requisites placed on the business.Whilst it may seem a challenge, it’s a challenge worth rising to, as having ISO 37001 certification puts your business one step closer to securing the next contract you pitch for.
Helps you with
- Anti-bribery policy
- Anti-bribery compliance
- Risk assessments
- Due diligence
- Prosecution protection
- Control mechanisms
- Reporting and investigation procedures
- Bribery of organisational personnel
- Effective anti-bribery processes
- Demonstrating compliance to relevant legislation such as the Bribery Act 2010
Benefits of ISO 37001 Certification
Legal compliance
Understand how statutory and regulatory requirements impact your organisation and its customers.
Business continuity
Avoid downtime with management of risk, legal compliance and vigilance of future security issues and concerns.
Be prepared
Reduce the risk of bribery occurring in your organization or against your organization and/or employees.
Business resilience
Avoid downtime and financial losses with effective management of risk, emergency preparedness and contingency planning.
Cuts investigation time to a minimum
The management system helps you to reduce investigation time if a breach is found.
Consistent quality approach
Common approach in the supply chain for supplier or subcontractor development, driving consistency, competence and control.
Enhanced credibility and recognition
The statement has been independently checked for accuracy and reliability, providing enhanced credibility and recognition to the business.
Is ISO 37001 certification right for me?
The implementation of ISO 37001 involves:
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Anti-bribery policy
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Anti-bribery compliance and control person
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Risk assessments
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Due diligence
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Control mechanisms
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Reporting and investigation procedures
How NQA can help you
NQA is truly focused on working in partnership with its customers to drive improvement and business benefit.
Technical committees and industry relationships.NQA is highly involved in a wide variety of industry committees and standards writing teams, helping us to maintain a keen awareness of changes within the industry.
Achieving certification to ISO 37001 is a challenge to any business, because it is not a typical management system. By the nature of adhering to anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws, meeting the needs of this standard are exceptionally high, and only a handful of accredited assessors are qualified to audit ISO 37001.
Contact the team to learn more.
Steps to Certification
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Step 1
Complete a Quote Request Form so we can understand you and your business. We will then use this to personally prepare a proposal for your certification and define what is known as your 'scope of assessment'.
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Step 2
We will then contact you to book your assessment with an NQA assessor. It consists of two mandatory visits that form the Initial Certification Audit. Please note that you must be able to demonstrate that your management system has been operational for a minimum of three months and has been subject to a management review and a full cycle of internal audits.
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Step 3
Following a successful stage two audit, a decision is made. If positive, your certification will be issued by NQA, with both a hard and soft copy of the certificate awarded. Certification is valid for three years and maintained through surveillance audits (years one and two) and a recertification audit in year three.