If you have been looking to deliver a market leading service to your customers at a competitive price, then there is a good chance you are working with third parties (and the associated fourth and fifth parties).
Third parties allow you to utilise skills you might not have (or want) at a price lower than what you would pay if you did it yourself. Quite frankly, using third parties in a no brainer in this day and age.
While there is no doubt using third parties increases your risk profile, a whole industry has spun up around managing third party risk with many using the good old ‘ambulance chasing’ tactic of the regulator will get you into trouble or you will experience a massively costly incident if you don’t do something about this.
While these might be true, they are based on quite a pessimistic outlook. If you start to understand why the regulators are so keen on this (in case you didn’t know it is to protect the customer!) then you start to see some real benefits from Third-Party Risk Management.
Therefore, we have put our heads together and come up with our top 5 benefits from third party risk management.
Strategic advantage – some will be cynical to this benefit, but it is true. If you are managing third party risk, you have less incidents, so customers are happy. This increases loyalty and trust in your brand and reputation. This will lead to more customers and firms wanting to work with you.
Data driven decision making – how many stories have we heard about an organisation who had an incident yet were aware of the risk that caused it? Chances are the risk was real but there was no data available in a timely manner to understand if it was being managed. Third Party Risk Management done properly allows you to be proactive not reactive.
Cost efficiency – let's put it out there, savings can be huge if proper planning goes into designing processes and how technology will be used! Workflow and the ability to collaborate with third parties alone removes hours of time spent chasing for replies or seeking approvals.
Peace of mind – if you are the accountable executive then you can be confident risks are being managed and compliance obligations fulfilled.Attract and retain talent – this one is often overlooked but, in an age, where there is a fight for talented people, we believe it is important. Let's be honest, nobody wants to work for a company where they spend hours using spreadsheets to try and get insight. They want that information at their fingertips so they can utilise their brain power to bring strategic value. A modern and flexible Third-Party Risk Management platform allows them to do that.
Please follow us on Linked In for regular insight from us on how technology can help you improve your risk management. In our next blog we will be sharing our views on a maturity curve clients could follow as they look to adopt technology to enhance Third-Party Risk Management.
To see demo videos of our Caveris ICAS platform in action click here - www.caveris.co.uk/videos
We always want to hear views and chat about this topic so don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]