They digitized the workflow. We changed the sequence.
Existing third-party risk platforms organize the questionnaire process: faster intake, better tracking, cleaner documentation. Workflow tools organize the work. They do not do it. Evidence-first diligence starts from what you require of a third party and what is independently knowable about it, and asks only for what cannot be corroborated without them.
Start from what you require, not from what you ask
A questionnaire is a list of questions. A requirement is what your organization actually expects of a third party: that its controls are independently tested, that its insurance meets your minimums, that its financial position can support the relationship. The traditional process collects answers first and leaves your team to decide, one questionnaire at a time, whether those answers add up to the requirement. A completed questionnaire is not the same thing as a qualified third party.
ThirdPartyIQ works in the other direction. Your requirements are the starting point, and each one is verified directly against the evidence. The questionnaire becomes an output of the diligence rather than the diligence itself, and because most requirements are settled before anyone contacts the third party, the evaluation is shorter.
Verified against the requirement
AssessIQ tests each requirement directly against the documents and signals already on file, and every result carries the page or source behind it.
Mapped back to the questionnaire
The same evidence pre-fills your own assessment and any standard questionnaire you need to complete, without collecting anything twice.
Qualified, not just completed
Your team decides whether the third party meets what you require. A returned form is no longer the finish line, and the evaluation is shorter for it.
Collect and read first. Everything else follows from that.
The order matters more than any single step. Most programs run it backwards, asking first and verifying later, which is why the work is heavy and the answer is stale.
01
Collect
Agents assemble what is independently knowable about a third party before anyone is asked to fill out a form. Documentation is retrieved on your authority, kept current as new versions are published, and extended to the third parties in your payment data that never entered the program at all.
02
Read
Every document is read in full, not filed. Exceptions and the controls they affect, controls pushed back onto you, scope gaps, subprocessors and fourth parties, bridge letter gaps, and what changed since the last version, each cited to the page it came from.
Then, continuously
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03
Sense
Watch signals and documents every day.
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04
Assemble
Tie the evidence to the third party and what it does for you.
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05
Reason
Decide whether the change actually matters to you.
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06
Recommend
One cited action, with its evidence attached.
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07
Approve
Your team decides. Every step recorded.
AI does the first six steps. Your team owns the last one.
Decisions, not dashboards
Most of what a standard questionnaire asks could be answered from sources that already exist. ThirdPartyIQ collects those sources, reads them, and answers most of the assessment before a question is sent. Only the exceptions go to the third party, as a short set of targeted items.
The risk signals already exist too: financial health, cybersecurity, sanctions, legal, reputational, and regulatory. Most tools surface them as numbers on a dashboard. ThirdPartyIQ reasons across them, decides whether a change is real risk for you specifically, and surfaces a recommendation backed by cited evidence. The same alert on two different third parties is two different answers, and context is the difference.
Before
A questionnaire with hundreds of questions goes to every third party, regardless of criticality or what is already independently verifiable
With ThirdPartyIQ
Evidence settles most of your requirements first, and only the exceptions go to the third party
Before
Your team reads the returned answers and decides, one questionnaire at a time, whether they meet what you require
With ThirdPartyIQ
Each requirement is verified directly against the evidence, and the results map back to whichever questionnaire you need to complete
Before
Documents are chased by email, then read by hand, one SOC 2 report and one financial statement at a time
With ThirdPartyIQ
Documentation is collected on your authority and read in full, returned as structured evidence with every finding cited
Before
Third parties spend hours answering the same questions for every buyer, and often deprioritize the smaller requesters
With ThirdPartyIQ
Third-party time drops to minutes: targeted confirmation of what you have already gathered, not a full re-documentation exercise
Before
Annual review cycles miss interim changes, and failures happen between the reviews
With ThirdPartyIQ
Continuous monitoring with alert-based exception handling, every relationship under watch, always
Before
Audit and exam prep concentrated in the weeks before the deadline
With ThirdPartyIQ
Documentation current at all times, with the audit trail of what triggered every action exportable on request
Examination procedures are our product specification
Financial services sets the highest bar for third-party oversight, so that is the bar we built to. If your third parties are reviewed by an auditor rather than an examiner, the questions turn out to be the same ones: what diligence did you perform, what have you done since, and can you show the record.
Lifecycle documentation, not point-in-time snapshots
Third-party guidance is organized around the full lifecycle, from planning and due diligence through contract negotiation, ongoing monitoring, and termination. ThirdPartyIQ covers due diligence and ongoing monitoring, where most of the documentation burden sits, and keeps that record current so it never has to be reconstructed later.
Proportionate to criticality
The guidance is explicit that the depth of diligence and monitoring should be proportionate to the risk and criticality of each relationship. Criticality tiers and risk ratings reflect that, so critical relationships get substantively deeper treatment without manual customization for every review.
Board and management reporting
Senior management and the board are expected to receive regular third-party risk reporting. ThirdPartyIQ maintains the portfolio view and exception log that feeds those reports, without a separate manual compilation step.
Demonstrable oversight of AI tools
Regulators and auditors are actively examining how organizations use AI in risk and compliance workflows. Because every output is cited, logged, and approved by a named person, you can demonstrate oversight of the tool rather than assert it.
The standard for third-party risk has changed
Across financial services, the expectations have converged. In June 2023 the U.S. banking agencies replaced three separate sets of third-party guidance with one shared framework. Insurers answer to service-provider oversight requirements under the NAIC’s Insurance Data Security Model Law, now adopted in many states, and the SEC’s 2024 amendments to Regulation S-P added service-provider oversight for broker-dealers and investment advisers. What they ask for is consistent: oversight proportionate to criticality, monitoring that continues for the life of the relationship, and documentation that shows what you did rather than what you intended.
Reviewers increasingly look for evidence of ongoing oversight rather than a periodic questionnaire, and for documentation showing the organization understands its dependencies, including concentration across shared infrastructure. AI is what makes continuous, evidence-based diligence viable at that scale, so meeting the bar no longer means hiring a larger team.
Interagency Guidance (2023)
OCC Bulletin 2023-17, FDIC FIL-29-2023, and Federal Reserve SR 23-4: one shared third-party framework across the three banking agencies, replacing guidance that had stood since 2008 and 2013, with a 2024 companion guide for community banks
NCUA third-party guidance
Supervisory expectations for credit unions on evaluating and overseeing third-party relationships, maintained separately from the interagency guidance
FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
Management of service providers and technology concentration risk
NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law
Requires insurers to use due diligence in selecting third-party service providers and to require them to protect the information they hold
SEC Regulation S-P (2024 amendments)
Requires broker-dealers, investment advisers, and other covered firms to oversee their service providers, including prompt notice of breaches affecting customer information
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
The Govern function’s cybersecurity supply chain risk management category, which sets out supplier due diligence, contract requirements, and ongoing monitoring
NIST SP 800-161 Rev. 1
Cybersecurity supply chain risk management practices for assessing and monitoring suppliers across the relationship
ISO/IEC 27036
The international standard for information security in supplier relationships
Outside financial services the vocabulary changes but the structure does not. Business-associate oversight under HIPAA, the customer security reviews technology companies face, supply chain frameworks like NIST and ISO, and ordinary internal audit expectations all ask the same three questions.
Nothing to rip out
If you have a third-party risk system, it stays your system of record and ThirdPartyIQ feeds it findings, evidence, and recommended actions. If you run on spreadsheets and email, ThirdPartyIQ includes a lightweight third-party register and workflow. A budget decision, not a replacement project, and your data stays yours.
See the approach in your program context
Walk us through your current third-party risk program and your review schedule. We’ll show you specifically where ThirdPartyIQ changes the work.
Get in touch