For a third year running our survey demonstrates that management of third parties remains a key priority. Organisations’ reliance on third parties to support key business processes has increased, as they seek to reduce costs, make efficiency gains or simply re-focus on core activities. Together with this, it is well understood that ultimate accountability for the services provided and the effectiveness of the control environment cannot be delegated or devolved, a point reinforced by the regulators in financial services. This is complicated when third parties are in turn using their own vendors, resulting in firms losing visibility or control over the entirety of the supply chain. The increased uptake of cloud computing services provided by specialised third-parties has amplified the concerns about key risks such as security and compliance. In most cases, internal audit teams are using multi-disciplinary teams to provide assurance over third-party due diligence practices, or perform ongoing monitoring to ensure both organisational policy and relevant regulatory standards are being complied with.
We are also observing a focus on evaluating the vendors’ approach to managing emerging risks as well as their responsiveness to control issues impacting their clients. We are starting to see some of the larger functions establishing dedicated third-party audit teams, electing to conduct third-party contract reviews for significant or high-risk vendor relationships.