$800+ Million Credit Union:
Vendor Management Case Study

The Challenge

Over the past 10 years, an internal audit director has been tasked with getting vendor management on track at five different financial institutions—everywhere from a $90 million-asset institution to one with over $1 billion in assets.

“The first time we used Nvendor, it was at a $100 million institution, where we had nothing in place. We didn’t even have a spreadsheet. Another time, I was at a $90 million institution. They had nothing in place and their contracts were all over the place when I got there.” 

“We merged into a $1 billion institution that had just been written up by the NCUA for their vendor management program. They had managed it all on a spreadsheet, and they got beat up pretty bad.” 

Common vendor management issues the internal audit director encountered included expensive autorenewals wasting money, lost contracts, no centralized vendor list or documentation, and overlooked vendor risk assessments.

She also found managers were frequently overwhelmed with contracts. “Management had to spend hours and hours and hours trying to decipher everything [in the contracts],” says the internal audit director who currently works for a $800+ million-asset credit union

The Solution

When you find a proven solution that’s effective, affordable and pleases both management and regulators, you stick want to stick with it no matter where you go. 

Nvendor is that solution for this director of internal audit. She relies on Nvendor (with services), Ncontracts’ flexible and feature-rich vendor management system, to achieve and maintain regulatory compliance with third-party vendor regulations and guidance, while Ncontracts Manager, an integrated contract management application, removes the hurdles and headaches associated with managing contracts. 

Nvendor continuously identifies and assesses critical vendors, and maintains and stores vital due diligence compliance data. Proactive email notifications ensure expensive autorenewals are avoided. A centralized repository ensures all documents and activities are logged, and vendor management tasks are assigned and completed. Expert attorneys review convoluted vendor contracts, identifying key provisions, and summarizing them into a few easy-to-read pages. 

An exam-ready interface makes it easy to demonstrate compliance to examiners and auditors. 

“Being able to show details about your vendors is what examiners want. They see you’ve done your homework. And you’ve done your job and you know what you’re talking about.” 

Nvendor is customizable and provides unlimited expert support, making it easy to adapt the solution to existing vendor management procedures—instead of having to reinvent them to fit the solution—at institutions of all sizes. 

Nvendor also increases risk visibility across the enterprise when used in tandem with other fully integrated Ncontracts products. The internal audit director’s institution employs Ncyber, a secure, online FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment application that automates and simplifies the Automated Cybersecurity Examination Tool questionnaire process; Nfindings, an application to automate the findings process; and Ncomply, a comprehensive compliance management software application.

The Results

Increased vendor visibility: “Now everything’s in one place, and you can pull it up whenever you want.” That includes contracts, risk assessments, due diligence documents, and task management updates. 

Improved reporting: “The tracking mechanisms alone are phenomenal. With a spreadsheet, someone has to look at the spreadsheet, and if you miss anything — if you have a contract that renews that you didn’t know about — you’re in trouble…You’ve got really good reporting, and really easy reporting of critical vendors.” 

Saved thousands of dollars by eliminating unwanted autorenewals: “The time-saving and organization of all of the contracts, being able to get the information you need when you need it, and the contracts not renewing when you didn’t want them to renew helped us a ton.” 

Prevented a repeat regulatory writeup: “We were able to bring in training, make sure risk assessments were done, and make sure contracts didn’t renew without us knowing…When the NCUA came back, there were absolutely no findings in our vendor management program.” 

Decreased management workload: Ncontracts’ expert team of attorneys now reviews contracts and summarizes key provisions into just a few pages, freeing up managers to focus on other issues. “They [managers] love that. The ease of going through a summary is night and day.” 

Recognition for quick implementation: The scalable nature of Nvendor makes it easy to implement wherever the internal audit director goes, allowing her to gather praise for quickly cleaning up vendor management. 

No pricing surprises: “With Nvendor, I know up front what you’re going to do for me, what I can expect, and what I’m going to pay.”