Entries by Joel Lawrence

What is a Fourth Party Vendor and Why Should I Care About Their Risk

Fourth-party risk is rising to the top of most auditors and examiners list when it comes to evaluating financial institutions vendor management program.  Fourth parties are your vendor’s third parties and subcontractors.  These vendors you will not have a direct contract; however, your vendor does, and relies on these vendors to produce a product or […]

The Prospect of Eliminating Overdraft Fees

Ally Bank has recently made headlines announcing that it would no longer charge its customers overdraft fees. Ally is a popular online bank that offers one type of checking account and overdraft fees only accounted for less than .07% of Ally’s revenue in 2020.  Ally Bank typically excludes consumers that use overdraft protection to begin […]

Employee Overdraft Privilege Training

As more and more states are reducing their Covid-19 restrictions, we are seeing an increase in employees from financial institutions going back to face-to-face work environments. As workers start returning to their workspace in a safe fashion, this is a great time to have some additional training with your employees regarding your Overdraft Privilege program. […]

Residual Risk Explained

Having a well maintained vendor management program will allow you to build relationships with your vendors, while also strengthening your business. Understanding your vendors’ residual risk is a key piece of your vendor management program and it will let you know the amount of risk or danger associated with a vendor’s action after controls are […]

Do you properly evaluate vendor risk?

Understanding vendor risk is an extremely important part of your vendor management program.  Each vendor that provides a product or service to you may have some inherit risk that your organization may take on.  Knowing the inherit risk for each of your vendors before you go into contract with them will provide insight into whether […]

Managing your Vendor’s Service Level Agreements

Vendor Manager automates vendor due diligence, provides a practical framework for deciding which vendors to assess in depth, assesses the risks they present, and monitors their performance. Defining and managing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with your vendors is a very important aspect of your Vendor Manger program.  An SLA defines the level of service expected […]

How do you Store Essential Vendor Documents

In today’s environment it is crucial to understand how you are managing your vendor documents.  It is important to know when a vendor needs to send you data or if you are missing documents and also where the documents are located.  Having a centralized repository for your vendor documents will help you become more efficient, […]