Bank Vendor Management

Your Bank. Compliant and Profitable. With Ncontracts.

NContracts is a web-based vendor and contract management solution that optimizes contract data and enables banks to dramatically reduce compliance costs and decrease vendor expenses. 
 
Your bank’s senior management personnel and board of directors will be held liable if your bank fails to comply with federally mandated vendor management regulations. Preparing for a regulatory compliance audit of your vendor management program can be both time consuming and expensive. So, take the cost out of compliance with efficient vendor and contract management through Ncontracts.

Learn about our Compliance Guarantee!

Ncontracts can help your bank address vendor management issues and achieve regulatory compliance by:

Establish a vendor compliance policy.
 
The first critical step in effectively managing bank vendors is to develop and adopt a formal vendor compliance management policy within your bank.  The development and adoption of such a policy will bring the issue to the board’s attention, which is ultimately responsible for the process, and highlights the importance of the program to your entire team.  The policy will also provide a framework around which to build your risk assessment ratings.

 
Manage and monitor bank vendors using Ncontracts.
 
Ncontracts features a full scale online risk rating tool to manage and monitor vendors. It gives your bank the ability to manage vendor risk in a way that is tailored to the complexity of each relationship, as detailed in the FFIEC regulatory guidelines.  Results are displayed graphically on the dashboard for a quick review by the Board or auditors. Examiners can be given read-only access to the entire system when necessary.  Furthermore, required documentation can be attached electronically and email reminders can be set up for required updates.

Ncontracts features a dedicated compliance department that is gathering, summarizing, and monitoring information for over 150 financial institution vendors on a daily basis. Our compliance department utilizes CPAs, CISSPs (Certified Information Systems Security Professionals), and paralegals to review information.  Our monitoring service obtains information from media outlets, web sites, SEC filings, press releases, third party subscription services, which is analyzed by Ncontracts to determine the relevant data to be communicated to Ncontracts clients. Instead of flooding clients with overwhelming amounts of data, Ncontracts selects the relevant information to share with Ncontracts clients through risk alerts to make sure banks have access to current information.

Bank vendor management is a hot button issue for banks in the face of regulatory pressure.  Regulations are constantly changing, and regulation enforcement continues to increase in its intensity and frequency.  There are three primary reasons why banks have a heightened interest in bank vendor management:

1. Reliance on third parties by banks;
2. Greater regulatory scrutiny on data privacy and security; and
3. Increasing number of highly publicized data breaches.

Regulatory compliance raises the importance of bank vendor management from a department-level process to a true enterprise-wide concern since members of the board of directors and senior management can be held personally liable for non-compliance situations.

According to the FDIC statement dated June 6, 2008, the board of directors and senior management are ultimately responsible for identifying and controlling the risks associated with vendors:

“An institution’s board of directors and senior management are ultimately responsible for managing activities conducted through third-party relationships, and identifying and controlling the risks arising from such relationships, to the same extent as if the activity were handled within the institution.”   FDIC-FIL-44-2008

Meet bank regulatory compliance with confidence.
 
Ncontracts enables your bank to respond quickly and confidently to regulatory inquiries and the audit demands of examiners.  By simply allowing read-only access for the examiner, our web-based tools gives you peace of mind knowing that you are inspection ready at a moment’s notice.

 

Ncontracts Compliance Guarantee: Ncontracts tools have been developed by lawyers in consultation with law firms, regulators, and consultants to provide clients with an efficient and effective vendor management process and tools that satisfy all regulatory requirements. In fact, Ncontracts guarantees that the vendor management tools in Ncontracts will always comply with current FDIC and OCC requirements. Additionally, every financial institution client utilizing Ncontracts has successfully passed the third party risk management portion of their exam.

Effective bank vendor management can yield additional value far beyond reducing risk and satisfying regulatory requirements.  Vendor portfolio management can increase net profits, improve contract terms, reduce costs from audits, and encourage better performance from vendors. Bank clients have realized a positive return on their investment within the first twelve months of utilizing Ncontracts.

Don’t take chances with FFIEC, OCC, and FDIC compliance. Contact Ncontracts and learn how your organization can use this powerful combination of software and services to manage vendors, mitigate the risks of non-compliance, and reduce costs. Call us today at 888-552-5658 for additional information or request a personal Ncontracts demonstration.