CASE STUDY — Mar 17, 2025
A US Financial Firm Streamlines Onboarding with a Third-Party Risk Management Solution
THE CLIENT:
A mid-sized financial institution in the US
USERS:
The financial institution's third-party risk and vendor onboarding team
As supervisory authorities across the globe continue to examine operational resilience in the financial sector, critical third parties, or non-financial organizations who play a critical role in financial markets, have come under focus. As a result, organizations are increasingly expected to actively manage risk in their third-party relationships and, in turn, promote resilient outcomes in the financial sector.
However, the increasing interconnectedness of businesses through third-party relationships has introduced complexities to risk management efforts. While these relationships offer access to specialized expertise and scalability, they also expose organizations to a multitude of risks, such as cyber-attacks and sustainability issues.
A mid-sized financial institution in the US was looking to streamline its third-party risk management (TPRM) process. Members of the vendor onboarding team wanted a scalable solution to address their due diligence requirements without introducing lengthy setup times or complex configurations. Any new solution needed to be ready to use, intuitive and aligned with best practices.
Pain Points
New account onboarding is one of the most pressing challenges for the financial services industry. A lack of industry standardization, transparency and controls, coupled with manual communication and changing requirements across institutions leads to an average of 40+ days to onboard a new account and deploy capital.
Members of the onboarding team at this financial institution wanted to upgrade their due diligence processes to improve efficiency and simplicity. They especially wanted a solution that would:
- Leverage the expertise of a firm that had a deep understanding of a broad range of risk domains, including information security, continuity planning and financial sustainability.
- Deliver a fast and cost-effective method to reduce the burden of Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements.
- Maintain compliance with ease as regulations continue to evolve.
- Require minimal customization to quickly be operational.
The team contacted S&P Global Market Intelligence ("Market Intelligence") to learn more about the firm's offerings.
The Solution
Market Intelligence specialists identified the S&P Global KY3P® offering, an integrated suite of solutions to manage end-to-end third-party and vendor risks, as the solution to meet the firm's needs. They described KY3P’s Onboarding Accelerator which includes predefined templates designed to make implementation fast and efficient, standardized questionnaires, and other capabilities that would enable the team to:
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Access a centralized data hub |
A centralized data hub helps financial institutions simplify third-party oversight processes. It enables users to collect and maintain up-to-date information on vendors in a single location to assist with implementing best practices and ensuring audit readiness. |
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Leverage pre-defined risk questionnaires |
Standardized questionnaires enable vendor information to be requested and stored once, with updates applied as needed. The platform helps firms collect and maintain risk information, including cybersecurity and financial ratings, sanctions data, news alerts, cyber event data, and questionnaire responses from third parties that can be used to generate risk scores |
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Streamline onboarding |
Onboarding Accelerator is an automated and customizable end-to-end onboarding solution for brokers, custodians, corporates, fund admins, managers and service providers. Built within Counterparty Manager, the industry-standard platform for entity data exchange, it integrates entity data, document collection, KYC and tax profile validation, regulatory protocols and self-declarations, legal and credit agreements and operational set-up into a seamless solution |
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Ease workflows |
Customized workflow capabilities enable users to seamlessly implement KY3P into their existing processes. Driven by insights from diverse banks, customers and S&P Global's cross-industry experience, the KY3P blended framework consists of control objectives critical to business. |
Key Benefits
Members of the firm's onboarding team chose to implement the KY3P solution and went live less than 20 days after the kickoff call to begin using the solution – a testament to KY3P's simplicity and efficiency. The streamlined process empowered the team to begin onboarding third parties almost immediately, saving valuable time and resources. Their questionnaire for due diligence was brief, with fewer than 30 questions, and overlapped significantly with KY3P’s prebuilt configuration that helped reduce complexity. The team has benefited from:
- Rapid implementation with minimal customizations for a smooth setup process without unnecessary complications.
- The ability to utilize a central platform for all TPRM activity to consolidate and digitize information and drive automation for large efficiency gains.
- The knowledge of specialists who understand all categories of potential risk.
In addition, active participation by a broad user community equips KY3P users with data and processes that are in line with best practices. This also helps remove redundancies and reduce the resource-intensive nature of any due diligence process.
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