Enterprises need to be aware of all degrees of risk that their clients and third parties may bring, ranging from a bribery allegation, to association with a sanctioned entity. Therefore, Adverse Media Monitoring is a critical part of customer or third-party due diligence program. Enterprises need to be kept abreast of all Adverse Media which may impact the risk level, so the Blue Umbrella AMM tool has a database which is constantly being updated so you never miss out on a piece of news.
In order to not succumb to a surprise piece of negative news, it’s important to introduce an Adverse Media Monitoring (AMM) tool alongside your due diligence process for third parties.
To make sure that your enterprise can make the most of an Adverse Media Monitoring software (or to better protect your organization and to drive efficiency and effectiveness of your compliance efforts), here are the five best practices for implementing adverse media screening.
- Know who to screen
Before implementing adverse media monitoring, enterprises need to know who they want to screen. A lot of enterprises are still using multiple tools and spreadsheets to manage their third parties. Some departments may have their own lists, while some departments are working with external parties – companies or individuals, that they may fail to identify as third parties. Building a centralized, clean third-party list will avoid duplicated efforts or generating irrelevant results due to incorrect input.
- What to screen
Enterprises needs to make sure they are not just screening against mainstream media outlets or structured data like sanction lists. An effective adverse media monitoring program needs to cover negative news in local media, structured and unstructured data. Whether it is a factory fire in Thailand, or a data breach in Brazil, enterprises need to be able to capture the risks as soon as the articles are published and before there are further damages.
- When to screen
Not all third parties bring the same level of risks, enterprises should take a risk-based approach to adverse media monitoring. For example, a high-risk third party will be screened on a daily basis and a low-risk third party will be screened on an annual basis. There should be automated workflows to decide the monitoring frequency based on risk levels and other pre-defined parameters.
- Harness the power of technology
An adverse media monitoring tool powered by advanced NLP technologies and sophisticated risk algorithms can identify relevant entities in a media article and the connection between the third party and the adverse finding, thereby significantly reducing the number of false positives, minimizing manual effort and allowing users to focus on findings that truly matter.
- Action on the risks
An effective adverse media screening program needs to be supplemented with flexible triage workflows to track the risks until they are resolved. To ensure that enterprises remember to conduct their adverse media monitoring, or if any negative media is detected, their risk level and classification also needs to be updated accordingly. A robust screening solution will offer risk algorithms to calibrate this and update compliance users of any changes. .. To drive greater efficiency, look for a screening solution that can be integrated seamlessly with your CRM or other internal systems. An integrated screening solution would provide all stakeholders with greater visibility into potential risks and compliance issues and achieve faster throughput of third party approval and recertification processes.
Find out more about Adverse Media Monitoring and how it can be easily incorporated into your compliance program, simply book a demo today.
