“We heard about Venminder and knew it was exactly what we needed. The fact Venminder had services in place that offered assistance with financial analyses, reviewing SOC 1/2/3 and risk grades was great.”

About

Headquartered in San Jose, California and with assets of approximately $517 million, CommonWealth is a community-based credit union.

Challenge

CommonWealth Central Credit Union is a community-based credit union with a strong focus on making a meaningful impact in their local communities. They understand the importance of building trust by having their members’ best interests in mind. Therefore, it’s important to them to have a strong vendor management program in order to verify they are choosing vendors that are financially sound with strong internal controls. 

With the increase in third party governance, the credit union began moving all vendor documentation to an online portal. While it helped to have a central location, the system lacked automation benefits. The credit union was also using Excel to risk rank vendors.

“We were managing everything pretty well at that point. When the the regulatory requirements on risk rating high risk and critical vendors became more rigorous, we realized that we did not have the tools, resources and expertise available in-house to fully meet all the third-party risk regulations,” said Eilish Perry, Director of Regulatory Compliance.

Solution

CommonWealth was referred to Venminder and found it to be exactly what they needed.

“We heard about Venminder and knew it was exactly what we needed. The fact Venminder had services in place that offered assistance with financial analyses, reviewing SOC 1/2/3 and risk grades was great.”

Eilish shared her onboarding experiencing with Venminder, overall finding it quick and efficient.  

“Onboarding was very easy, and we had support through each step of the process. The training was one-on-one, and everybody was incredible and still are. The Venminder Relationship Manager I work with is there to help with whatever I need. Even with last minute or rushed requests, he is very responsive and gets back to me immediately. I would give an eleven out of ten for customer service at Venminder if I could.”

Results

Since partnering with Venminder, CommonWealth Central Credit Union has taken advantage of the staff expertise and used the Venminder team for managed outsourced services such as SOC and financial reviews. This has saved the credit union a lot of time.

“They're fantastic. I love the reports and because they are color coded, it makes it very quick and easy for me and our VPs to review. If it’s green, they know they’re good to go, so they don’t have to spend too much time reviewing the report. When they see red, they know they need to take a little more time to review and investigate further.”

She also shared that outside auditors have been pleased with the credit union’s vendor management program since partnering with Venminder.  When recently vetting a new online banking provider, they were able to use Venminder for the reviews and show auditors exactly what due diligence they completed.

“I was able to show what Venminder does for us and ultimately show how we did our full due diligence.”

When asked for additional feedback, Eilish shared that Venminder’s educational resources have been extremely useful to her team.

“Your webinars are absolutely fantastic. I love that the recordings are always available to me or to share with my team. I find that if we have someone new to vendor management here, I'm able to share those webinars with them which is huge as far as training and getting a broad understanding of what it all means.”

Eilish shared she would highly recommend Venminder to other credit unions.