Third-Party Vendor Management
Your operations run on their systems. The accountability stays with you.
Core processing, digital banking, payments, and now AI all live with third parties. We build a lifecycle program that tiers vendors by what they touch, front-loads due diligence before contracts are signed, and keeps watch continuously instead of once a year.
The Problem
An annual questionnaire is not a program. It’s a ritual.
Most vendor management lives in a spreadsheet: two hundred rows, a stack of unread SOC 2 reports, and a review column that quietly slipped two years behind. Once a year, questionnaires go out, answers come back, boxes get checked. Meanwhile the vendors most likely to hurt you changed their subprocessors, their ownership, or their security posture in month three.
Regulators reorganized their expectations around this exact failure. The 2023 Interagency Guidance frames vendor risk as a lifecycle: planning, due diligence, contracting, ongoing monitoring, and termination, with effort proportional to what each vendor touches. We build that program, clear the backlog that’s accumulated, and run the cycle with you so it never slips again.
The Lifecycle
Five stages. Effort proportional to risk.
Stages per the Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships (June 2023). NCUA holds credit unions to comparable expectations.
Inventory
Inventory & risk tiering
Every third party identified and tiered by data access, operational criticality, and customer impact, so a core processor and a landscaper never get the same paperwork.
Diligence
Risk-based due diligence
SOC reports actually read, financials reviewed, security posture assessed, and findings documented before contracts are signed, scaled to the vendor’s tier.
Contract
Contract & SLA review
Security requirements, breach notification timelines, audit rights, data return, and termination terms negotiated in, not discovered missing during an incident.
Monitor
Continuous monitoring
Security-rating feeds, breach intelligence, and financial-health signals watched year-round, with alerts triaged by our cyberteam so changes surface when they happen.
Concentration
Concentration & fourth-party risk
Analysis of where too much depends on one provider, and visibility into your vendors’ critical subcontractors, the fourth parties examiners increasingly ask about.
Exit
Exit & termination planning
A documented exit strategy for every critical vendor: data return, transition alternatives, and timelines, written while the relationship is healthy rather than during a dispute.
How it Works
From overdue spreadsheets or cumbersome old platforms to a running, efficient program.
Most institutions come to us with a backlog, not a blank slate. The path is built for that reality.
Program Build
Sequential
Step 01
Inventory & tier
Weeks 1-3
Every vendor identified, tiered, and mapped to the data and operations it touches. The register becomes the single source of truth.
Step 02
Clear the backlog
Weeks 3-10
Overdue reviews triaged by tier and worked down, starting with the vendors that could actually hurt you. Findings documented, exceptions escalated.
Step 03
Stand up monitoring
Weeks 8-12
Continuous monitoring feeds switched on for critical tiers, alert thresholds set, and exit plans drafted for every Tier 1 relationship.
Outcomes
What done looks like.
Proportional
Effort matched to risk
Critical vendors get deep, continuous scrutiny. Low-risk vendors get a light annual touch. Your team’s hours go where the exposure actually is.
Exam-Ready
A defensible file per vendor
Tiering rationale, due diligence, contract terms, monitoring history, and exit plan in one place. When the examiner picks a vendor at random, the file is complete.
Aware
No surprises
Ownership changes, breaches, subprocessor swaps, and financial trouble surface when they happen, with a triaged alert and a recommended action, not at next year’s review.
