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Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare

Companies in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector face numerous challenges to their global growth, as they seek to expand into high-reward / high-risk emerging markets. These risks encompass unauthorised
copying of patented medicines and competition from
manufacturers of low-cost generic drugs, alongside
broader operational and reputational risks related
to irregular legal and regulatory environments
and fast-changing political risks.

Maplecroft has developed a range of products and services to enable pharmaceutical and healthcare companies to identify, monitor and manage these risks throughout their value chains and to pinpoint market opportunities. These include sector specific country risk reports; over 160 risk indices and interactive maps; risk screening tools to assess supply chain risks; and company risk reports, developed to enable due diligence on suppliers.

Maps and indices

With over 160+ risk indices and interactive maps, Maplecroft analyses the most pressing issues impacting the agro-commodities sector down to site specific levels. Indices and maps include: climate change vulnerability; natural hazards; water stress; food security; corruption; legal and regulatory risks; political risks; poverty and development; and reputational threats arising from complicity with labour rights and human rights violations in the supply chain.

Maplecroft’s indices and interactive maps are available individually or can be accessed through seven thematic risk atlases, which aggregate key issues.

Atlases

Maplecroft’s Atlases are updated annually and provide maps, indices and scorecards for up to 197 countries, as well as analysis of the key issues, methodologies and data sources.

  • Global Risks Atlas

    Assesses the strategic risks that impact the global value chains of business, as well as the ability of national institutions to mitigate them. Includes 36 risk indices and interactive maps assessing macroeconomics; security; resource security; climate change; and pandemics; governance risks and societal resilience.

  • Political Risk Atlas

    Appraisal of traditional political risks including: conflict, terrorism, rule of law and the regulatory and business environment; as well as structural challenges affecting political stability such as resource security, climate change and human rights. Includes 50 political risk indices, maps and scorecards for 197 countries.

  • Legal and Regulatory Environment Risk Atlas

    An ideal tool to help organisations identify and monitor legal and regulatory risks, such as corruption, corporate governance, regulatory framework, respect for property rights. Includes 21 indices and maps, scorecards for 173 countries, in addition to an assessment of the implementation of ten key legal instruments.

  • Human Rights Risk Atlas

    Analyses 31 different human rights violation categories – including seven composite indices covering human security, labour rights and protection, civil and political rights, access to remedy, complicity and lack of rule of law, reporting environment, and overall human rights protection – across 197 countries.

  • Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas

    Provides comprehensive analysis of the key risks to business in the areas of climate change vulnerability and adaption; emissions and energy use; environmental regulation; and ecosystem services. It includes 23 interactive maps and indices, which have been developed to identify, evaluate and compare climate change and environmental risks down to 25km2 worldwide and provide insight into current and emerging trends.

  • Natural Hazards Risk Atlas

    Evaluates the risks and resilience to the occurrence of natural hazard events in 197 countries. Includes indices and interactive subnational maps of 12 natural hazard risks, as well as scorecards for all countries. The Atlas also measures overall economic exposure and socio-economic resilience to natural hazards.

  • Growth Markets Atlas

    Provides an evaluation of economic performance, investment conduciveness, recent structural reforms and projected future demographic trends, including growth of middle class consumers. Maplecroft divides its scoring across the three indices evaluating Growth Performance, Growth Environment and Growth Potential. The Atlas includes 17 indices and scorecards for 173 countries.

Reports and analysis

Maplecroft’s briefings and in-depth reports help organisations in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector to monitor and manage a wide variety of operational and reputational risks. These empower firms to understand the full spectrum of extra-financial risks associated with investing in, or sourcing from, a country or sub-national region.



Maplecroft monitoring and reporting system

  • Baseline in-depth reports (25+ pages): Produced at the outset of the year or at an agreed alternate annual date to provide substantive background analysis and due diligence review of key issues and risks (the governance framework; political risk and violence; the economy; the regulatory and business environment; human rights and society; and natural hazards, environment and climate change). In addition the reports integrate GIS derived, sub-national maps and provide stakeholder viewpoints on risk and key recent events.
  • Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly Monitors (1 page scorecards for key watch countries): Offering quantitative country risk scores and trends of increasing, unchanged or decreasing risk across key risk areas and qualitative analysis of significant recent events and outlooks across the core risk areas. Developed to focus on issues driving changes to risk scores and our forecast for the next quarter including implications for sectors.
  • Trigger briefings (2-4 pages): Concise analysis and forecasts that are activated when the risk within a country changes significantly, as shown in the monitor. These focus on the issues driving changes to risk scores and the implications for business.
  • In-depth update reports or tailored specific reports (25+ pages): Produced when more in-depth analysis is required on the back of the trigger briefing and pertaining to sectors or business specific

Issue specific reports

  • Pharmaceutical and healthcare country risk reports (30+ pages): Comprehensive analysis of regulatory challenges; access to healthcare; emerging political developments relating to governmental healthcare policies; changes to taxation; corruption; and additional legal requirements for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In-depth reports also provide trends, forecasting, stakeholder views, recent events and GIS-derived sub-national maps that can feature overlays of key infrastructure (ports, roads and railways), poverty and recorded cases of infectious diseases.
  • Transparency and integrity briefings: These assess constraints on transparency and subsequent risks to business integrity in countries that are heavily involved in pharmaceutical production or supply. Topics covered include: corporate governance, corporate responsibility and anti-corruption compliance.
  • Supply chain integrity briefings: Detailed evaluations of pertinent operational and reputational risks to companies sourcing from or outsourcing to key countries within their value chain. Topics include: labour rights and protection, civil and political risks, corruption risks and environmental protections.
  • Access to healthcare briefings: Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of healthcare infrastructure in key pharmaceutical and healthcare markets, providing insight into where opportunities exist for investment or for marketing of individual products.
  • Product security and counterfeiting briefings: These assess the adequacy of product security enforcement and the potential for counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products. Briefings include: analysis of the specific legal framework regarding intellectual property and the risks and implications associated with inadequacy of enforcement.

Further products for the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors are available via the Global Risks Portfolio and include, labour standards reports, corruption risk briefings, election monitors and quarterly monitors.

*Maplecroft’s products are available for all countries and can be tailored to client specifications.

Interactive Tools

Custom country / sovereign risk calculators enable pharmaceutical and healthcare companies to select and compare risk indices to create scorecards that quantify risk for all countries. The Interactive Dashboard also allows companies to combine their own compliance and country risk data with Maplecroft’s indices in a central repository where they can create bespoke indices, maps and risk scorecards using a proprietary online interface.

Services

Maplecroft offers a wide range of advisory services to the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, with particular expertise in helping companies to mitigate extra-financial risks in their operations, supply chains and distribution networks, particularly in emerging markets, such as India, China, Africa and Latin America.

Risk screening tool

Maplecroft delivers a range of supply chain risk screening tools to allow business to visualise, measure and monitor supplier risk for different geographies, different supply chain levels (e.g. tier 1), as well as for different sectors and issues, such as human rights and labour standards. Pharmaceutical and healthcare industries can weight different indices within these screening tools to reflect their individual operational, ethical and reputational priorities and concerns.

Company reports

Maplecroft’s in-depth bespoke company reports can provide vital insights into a selected companies’ environmental, social, governance (ESG) and political risk exposures and their management proficiency. These empower companies to conduct due diligence and audits of entities in their supply chain, joint venture partners or possible acquisition targets, for instance suppliers of pharmaceutical goods or rival healthcare providers.

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01Analysing primary risks to the pharmaceuticals industry in key emerging markets

Maplecroft has recently produced a series of country risk reports on key fast-growing pharmaceutical and healthcare markets, including China, Brazil and Mexico, for a well-known multinational pharmaceutical company.

Each report focused on one country and provided:

  • In-depth summary of the status of the healthcare sector and infrastructure in that country.
  • Detailed assessment of key regulatory issues faced by the country’s pharmaceutical industry.
  • Comprehensive review of proposed healthcare reform and implications for the pharmaceutical sector.

Additional follow-up reports were then produced for selected countries, which the client had identified as being of exceptional interest. These follow-up reports included more tightly targeted analysis on key issues of concern, such as supply chain integrity and transparency, access to healthcare and product security. The reports additionally outlined key steps that the client could take to manage and mitigate these risks.

02Creation of an Interactive Risk Dashboard for a global producer of pharmaceuticals

Maplecroft has developed an online Interactive Risk Dashboard to enable a multinational pharmaceutical company to monitor risk issues across its value chain - including investments, operations, supply chain, and distribution networks.

  • Utilising Maplecroft’s bank of 160+ risk indices and interactive maps the Interactive Risk Dashboard enables the client to choose and focus on the issues and territories that are most relevant to them to identify hotspots of risk within its value chain.
  • By adding their own risk and compliance data the Dashboard enables the company to create a single risk knowledge centre, where company resources are securely stored alongside, and are used in tandem with Maplecroft’s research.
  • The company uses the Dashboard to develop ‘custom’ groupings to aggregate indices and apply simple weightings to calculate new indices, which are specific to the unique risks facing the pharmaceutical sector. They view risk outputs on the Dashboard via indices, interactive maps and tailored scorecards.

The Interactive Risk Dashboard allows the company to identify risks that are specific to them across selected countries or regions. It highlights cross-linkages between issues, countries and departments, while also linking to horizon outlooks and other issues to enable them to manage risks across their entire value chain.

03Analysing and mapping global dietary deficiencies for a leading vitamin producer and an intergovernmental organisation

Maplecroft was contracted by a multinational leader in micronutrients and food fortification, in association with an intergovernmental organisation, to produce a series of global indices and maps to identify which countries’ populations were at most risk of malnutrition and dietary deficiencies.

  • Maplecroft developed a suite of indices and interactive maps for the company, covering hunger; accumulative micronutrient and vitamin deficiency; iron deficiency; vitamin A deficiency; and GDP losses due to micronutrient and vitamin deficiency.
  • The indices and maps highlighted the populations most exposed to vitamin deficiencies and hunger across 200 countries and the data was used to inform food aid programs for the intergovernmental organisation.
  • A campaign by the company raising public awareness of the issue was also instigated, with Maplecroft’s communications team working with the international press to exploit PR opportunities.
  • The interactive maps, hosted by Maplecroft, were embedded in the company’s website and made publically available, as part of their corporate responsibility programme.