Some of America's biggest financial institutions, including American Express, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, have set up a new company that will carry out risk assessments on suppliers and partners.
Headed up by Thomson Reuters veteran Abel Clark, TruSight aims to combine best practices and standardise processes for carrying out risk vendor assessments.
Financial services firms are increasingly relying on third parties for a host of critical services in the digital age but, says TruSight, the industry lacks a simple and comprehensive approach to gather and validate risk assessment information on these firms.
This causes both the financial institutions and the vendors to spend time and money requesting, providing and validating assessment information in an inefficient and duplicative manner.
TruSight is promising to make life easier by gathering information on service providers' information security, technology, hiring practices and governance, verifying it through remote or on-site validation.
This information is stored on a secure, shared platform available to financial institutions of all sizes, including investment banks, wealth management firms, asset managers, credit card companies, insurers and community and regional banks.
Ken Litton, chief procurement officer, JPMorgan Chase, says: "Financial institutions of all sizes can benefit from the confidence and added credibility that comes from using industry standards to gather and validate third-party risk information. We look forward to TruSight's work with institutions and third-party vendors to combine risk management and control best practices."
Earlier this year Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Morgan Stanley invested in a similar platform from IHS Markit, called Know Your Third Party (KY3P).