OCC’s Supplemental Examinations Procedures for Third-Party Relationships

Financial services regulators look to be raising the intensity of their gaze on third-party relationships again. At the end of January 2017, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued Supplemental Examination Procedures for Third Party Relationships. This release challenges the financial services industry to raise its game when it comes to managing third-party relationships and risk in the coming months.

With this document the OCC expects banks to take a much more strategic approach to manage third-party relationships and third-party risk. Learn more about what it expects the financial institutions it supervises to do, including:

• Have a third-party relationship strategy
• Use technology to supply a wide range of different kinds of business, risk, compliance, and control information to all relevant stakeholders
• Have an involved Board that sets third-party strategy and monitors the success of that strategy
• Understand that third-party subcontractors must be monitored and reviewed at nearly the same level of scrutiny as the third parties themselves
• Treat independent reviews of third-party relationships as an essential “check and balance” – and resource these activities appropriately