Market Risk Alerts The Importance of Monitoring Vendor News
Market Risk Alerts The Importance of Monitoring Vendor News

Market Risk Alerts: Why Vendor News Monitoring is Valuable to Your Company

Scouring hundreds of news sites in search of any mention of your vendor companies, or setting up electronic alerts to notify you when a crucial supplier makes headlines?  This can sometimes seem like a waste of time.

When done right, vendor news monitoring can deliver significant value to your organization. Due diligence starts with a review of the vendor’s public history, news, SEC filings, regulatory actions, lawsuits, and other important information. While these are important one-time activities, it’s also critical to have resources in place for ongoing, real-time monitoring.

For example?  One of your vendors experiences a cybersecurity breach. They may or may not inform you directly. But even if you assume you hear about it without regular news monitoring, what are the ongoing repercussions? Did your risk rating for Equifax change after their data breach? Were you aware of the changes in leadership and legal actions that occurred thereafter? Did the breach expose a long-term vulnerability that changes your assessment of risk?

Monitoring and risk alerts should cover news and information about your vendors related to:

  • Financial news and SEC filings
  • Data security breaches
  • Regulatory sanctions
  • Organizational and leadership changes
  • Other news that has an impact on a company’s reliability and strategic direction

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Purely electronic tools create their own risks

Purely electronic tools that are driven by algorithms alone can cause critical information to be missed because they’re based on a finite number of keywords and can limit the scope of searches. Manual searches of financial and business news, social media, and other platforms can be time-consuming. When performed by an employee with less experience in this area, it can also be risky.

Missed information can lead to serious repercussions for your business, including exposing you to:

  • Enforcement actions and fines
  • Negative press and reputational damage
  • Criminal penalties or sanctions against firms and covered individuals
  • Time wasted dealing with investigations and remediation

Continual monitoring, risk assessment, and review of information help protect business assets, reputation, and shareholders’ interests. The combination of electronic monitoring and a human team dedicated to and specializing in news monitoring delivers a definitive and robust solution for due diligence.

Outsourcing research, monitoring, and risk alerts

In this ever-more-complex landscape, companies are turning to vendor risk management (VRM) solutions that offers market risk monitoring as a standalone service or as part of our greater solution. The process should encompass the raw data, analyst input, and actions taken.  A media monitoring team can track customers’ vendors in real-time, delivering risk alerts to ensure customers get the right information precisely when they need it.

In the era of big data, it can be easy to be overwhelmed with the quantity of information available and difficult to identify the content that is most important. With an expert team on your side, vendor management that includes news monitoring and risk alerts can improve your due diligence processes.

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