FSB Unveils Toolkit to Strengthen Third-Party Risk Management

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The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has released a toolkit designed for financial authorities and institutions to enhance their management and oversight of third-party risks. This initiative addresses concerns surrounding the diverse interactions between financial institutions and third-party service providers, emphasizing critical services with potential implications for financial stability. The toolkit focuses on third-party risk management, considering evolving industry practices and recent regulatory approaches to operational resilience.

Key objectives of the toolkit include reducing regulatory fragmentation, strengthening financial institutions’ risk management capabilities, and promoting coordination among stakeholders. The toolkit, developed following a public consultation, aims to enhance clarity and consistency in third-party risk management by providing common terms and definitions. It also offers tools to identify critical services, manage risks, and supervise how financial institutions handle third-party dependencies.

The toolkit covers various areas, including incident reporting, criteria for identifying systemic dependencies, and tools for managing potential systemic risks. It emphasizes proportionality, allowing adaptation to different institution sizes and complexities. The FSB encourages comparability and interoperability of regulatory approaches across sectors and jurisdictions.

Additionally, the FSB proposes exploring greater convergence of regulatory frameworks for systemic third-party dependencies, options for cross-border information-sharing, and resilience testing. The toolkit seeks to address the evolving landscape of third-party interactions and enhance the financial system’s resilience by fostering collaboration and standardized approaches to risk management.