banking & finance solutions
Frequent Questions
Q: What is the cost to banks and financial institutions?
Vendormate offers three vendor credentialing solutions to the banking industry. Banks may choose a vendor-funded option that requires a small customization fee from the bank and credentialing service fees from the participating vendors. Alternatively, banks may choose to fund the entire service internally, with a customization fee and a small monthly retainer. Finally, banks that do not require customization may choose the Bankvendor solution, with no charge for the bank, and a $349 annual credentialing fee for the vendor.
Q: What does vendor credentialing cost vendors?
Depending on the level of customization and vendor involvement, vendor companies may pay nothing or up to $349.
Q: How are credential requirements set?
Each bank sets the credentialing requirements for their operations. Typically, banks use three categories of requirements based on a combination of factors, including an assessment of the risk created by the 3rd-party vendor’s access to depositor information.
Q: What are the credential requirements?
FFIEC guidance is typically used as the basis for the requirements for 3rd party vendors. Banks are often interested in the data security and disaster recovery plans of IT service vendors.
Q: How long does it take to launch Vendormate vendor management applications?
Planning is important to the success of a vendor management program. Vendormate’s robust implementation process includes careful analysis of a bank’s existing policies, consultation with a bank’s own internal auditors, and recommended best practices from other banks across the country. If a bank has already defined its requirements, the service can be live with a custom interface in as little as four weeks. Banks that choose Bankvendor, with its predefined, commonly accepted standards, can be live within 24 hours.
Q: Is my data secure?
Vendormate selected SunGard as its network and hosting provider because SunGard delivers the highest levels of physical, network, server, application and data security to safeguard your data. SAS 70 Type II audits of SunGard services and infrastructure are conducted annually.
Each user is assigned a unique user name and password that must be entered at each login. Every password is encrypted and stored in the secure database. Access via Secure Socket Layer (256 SSL) protects your information using both server authentication and data encryption. After authentication, each user's identity accompanies every data request, to strictly enforce segregation of customer data. Critical personal Information like SSNs are not collected, and credit card numbers are not physically stored in the database.
Q: What is Vendormate’s privacy policy?
Read Vendormate’s privacy policy.
Q: What vendor information is shared among banks?
In Bankvendor, all vendor information is available for review by all participating banks. In a custom Vendormate application, corporate information and contact information is available to all banks. Other information, such as data security, disaster recovery and SAS70 letters, are shared only with the vendor’s approval.