As a third party provider, we read with interest the Finance and Leasing Association’s finalised Best Practice guidance on Managing Third Party Risk which was published today – FLA members can view the full guidance at https://www.fla.org.uk/business-information/documents/fla-best-practice-on-managing-third-party-risk/  

In summary, the FLA recommends that members:

• Risk assess new service proposals set to be delivered by third party firms;
• Implement proportionate systems and controls to assess third party firms at bid stage;
• Ensure their agreements with third party firms adequately protect them from risk;
• Take a risk based approach to monitoring external risk and contracted third party firms; and
• Design processes that allow for the exiting, renewing and retiring of third party relationships.

The ‘Three Lines of Defence’ model is widely used by financial services organisations to define risk management responsibilities and boundaries. Here at Ascent we already have a strong and well established three lines of defence model, meaning we’re capable of quickly identifying and reacting to risk, and efficiently deploying our resources to manage risk on a priority basis. 

Indeed, our quality checking is externally recognised as market leading - we are accredited by the Lending Standards Board and understand we are the only business in our markets with this accreditation.