United Bank Case Study

The Solution

United Bank solved these issues when it adopted Nvendor, Ncontracts’ industry-leading third-party risk management (TPRM) solution, with Professional Services and cyber monitoring in 2023. In 2024, the bank added Ntelligent Contracts Assistant (NCA), an AI-powered contract management tool.

“This year we actually changed our vendor management terminology to ‘third-party risk management’ to demonstrate that we’re aware of the guidance and working to comply.”

“When we saw Nvendor and Ncontracts’ focus on banking regulation we were excited. The products were built specifically to meet regulatory guidelines and ease the burden we face as banking professionals. A few minor tweaks, and we were ready to go.”

With Nvendor, everything Maxwell needs for TPRM – from documents to vendor risk assessments – is in one place and can be accessed by staff who need it. Vendor due diligence document review is outsourced to Ncontracts’ in-house team of vendor management experts, who provide executive summaries of key information. The bank gets automatic updates when an issue with a critical vendor emerges, and NCA creates a scorecard identifying where contract provisions don’t align with regulatory guidance across 17 fields.

The Result

Reduced vendor management workload. United Bank saves time with Ncontracts professional services to review due diligence documents for its 14 most critical and GLBA vendors. “Before, I had to review all those documents myself. We definitely get our money’s worth on the professional services. I can’t expect every vendor manager to know how to read a financial statement or a SOC report.” 

Enhanced efficiency. Nvendor helps Maxwell divide and conquer the bank’s vendor management tasks. “If I send out a request for vendor documentation, it just gets trashed since the vendors don’t know me. Now I assign due diligence questionnaires to our relationship managers, and they contact the vendor to get the documents.”

Alignment with TPRM guidance. Maxwell feels more confident in the bank’s approach to TPRM. “It makes me feel better as the ISO and the vendor management coordinator, knowing that I have provided more information than ever before.”

More comprehensive reporting. “The package that I created for the board meeting this year was much more robust. I love the ability to provide the Vendor Risk Overview report for all of our managed vendors.”

Improved cybersecurity posture. “I love the cyber monitoring function. It intertwines nicely from an information security perspective. I’m very heavily invested in what’s happening with our vendors.”

Nuanced TPRM risk assessments. Maxwell appreciates the ability to tailor Nvendor and NCA to suit United Bank. “If one of the 17 items in the NCA doesn’t apply to your contract, you simply remove it from the scorecard, instead of having all of these fails for things that aren’t applicable.”

Responsive product enhancements. Lisa learned a lot about TPRM workflows when she was responsible for building them. When she onboarded Nvendor, she shared her ideas and they were integrated in later enhancements.