Modern Slavery — a term that encompasses forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking — is assumed by many in the finance industry to be a problem for law enforcement and government. We think it is time investors put it on their agenda.

By its very nature, modern slavery is a difficult problem to get a handle on. According to the Global Slavery Index, produced by the Walk Free Foundation and the UN’s International Labour Organisation, around 40m people were enslaved worldwide in 2016; 136,000 of those in the UK. The UK government has put the figure in the “tens of thousands”.