Financial Center Federal Credit Union selected Quantivate's vendor management solution to comply with NCUA guidelines and mitigate operational risks associated with vendor selection. The implementation improved efficiency, consistency, and oversight in vendor management, allowing the credit union to make informed decisions and manage risks effectively. With the new system, Financial Center can now perform in-depth assessments and integrate vendor information into overall business continuity planning.

1. Driven by the need to meet NCUA guidelines and reduce operational risk, Finance Center Federal
Credit Union (Financial Center) selects Quantivate to help manage all aspects of vendor selection and
governance.
Quantivate Vendor Management Solution
Improves Efficiency and Reduces Risk
Finance Center Federal Credit Union (Financial Center) originated in 1953 to
serve the military personnel and civilians assigned to Fort Benjamin Harrison
on the east side of Indianapolis, Indiana. Since then, it has doubled its operating
footprint and is now comprised of over 47,000 members worldwide, making
it one of the largest charters in the National Credit Union Administration
(NCUA). To sustain this explosive growth, Financial Center needed to bring
fresh products to new market segments. Bringing on new partners meant new
vendors being leveraged to enable them, in turn introducing more risk to the
credit union. With this, Financial Center realized that a much more proactive
vendor management solution was required to properly meet NCUA vendor risk
management guidelines.
Success
Story
Finance Center Federal Credit Union
7101 East 56th Street
PO Box 26501
Indianapolis, IN 46226-050
Contact:
William C. Hord
VP of Enterprise Risk Management
(317) 916-6197
bhord@fcfcu.com
© Quantivate LLC 2014 • www.quantivate.com • sales@quantivate.com • 1-800-969-4107

2. Solution Highlights
• Meet NCUA guidelines: Financial Center is able to perform everything
required for a vendor, including due diligence, risk assessments, contract
reviews, relationship assessments, and expiration notifications.
• Manage vendor risk: Financial Center is able to complete in-depth risk
assessments for all vendors as they come on board, are renewed, and as
their business practices change.
• Improved business continuity planning: Financial Center is able to
integrate its vendor information directly into its overall business continuity
planning.
• Operate the business with confidence: The Quantivate solution helps the
Financial Center be more productive and function safely as it relates to
managing risk and meeting a multitude of compliance requirements. This
includes bringing a level of comfort in knowing they don’t need to worry
about missing something, especially notices for non-auto-renewals of
vendor agreements.
Intersection of software, partnerships, and NCUA
compliance drives decision
Three-and-a-half years ago, Financial Center’s vice presidents were
individually responsible for vendor management as it related to their own
lines of business. Over time, the VPs realized that this was not one of their
core competencies. Each of their programs essentially lacked company-wide
consistency and a standard of discipline for how vendors were selected, vetted,
and ultimately managed.
Upon review of the process, they found that the organization was handling
each vendor the same, regardless of the level of urgency and risk that it
introduced to the business. This, of course, didn’t help Financial Center in
terms of meeting NCUA vendor management guidelines.
The board of directors decided that it needed to be able to map this vendor
criticality against the NCUA requirements as part of a larger vendor
management program designed to help mitigate risk. The initial try at this
was somewhat hit-and-miss, and Financial Center ultimately was unable to
develop a systematic approach to how vendors were managed.
After a sizeable amount of due diligence, Financial Center discovered that
Quantivate offered the vendor “trifecta” the right software - a very capable
service partnership with The Paragon Group - and demonstrated support for
NCUA. With this, Financial Center decided to move forward with Quantivate’s
Vendor Management solution, a choice that would later drive additional
Quantivate offerings to be selected.
Easily started, easily customized
With more than 70 critical vendors on board (based upon NCUA’s Criticality
Matrix), Financial Center needed to first get all of them entered in the
Quantivate system. As this was happening, Financial Center realized that some
data customizations were necessary. Fortunately, the company found the
ability to do this simply by creating fields to accomplish tasks, such as unique
accounts payable ID’s or contract disposition fields.
As Financial Center started working with the Quantivate system, it began to
leverage the due diligence data collection capabilities offered by the vendor’s
partner, The Paragon Group.
“We get so much more than an NCUA
checklist; we are able to succinctly
quantify the results of our vendor
management program and save
tens of thousands of dollars in the
process.” — William Hord
Success Story:
Finance Center Federal Credit Union
Challenges and Drivers
• Tunnel vision: Financial Center
knew it needed to understand
its critical vendors for NCUA
certification purposes, yet found
it lacked the necessary visibility.
Vendors were being managed in
different business unit silos and the
plans were managed via disparate
software tools such as Word and
Excel.
• Inconsistency: At Financial Center,
vendor management was falling
through the cracks, as the process
was largely being administered by
multiple people through manual
means and ad-hoc controls. In
addition, Financial Center found
it difficult to make a connection
between vendor management and
its business continuity program.
• Business and data segregation:
There was no centralized software
in place for Financial Center to
store its vendor documents. In
most cases, they ended up as
physical documents stored in file
cabinets throughout the various
offices.
© Quantivate LLC 2014 • www.quantivate.com • sales@quantivate.com • 1-800-969-4107
“Quantivate’s solution has proven
invaluable...” — William Hord

3. “We used the vendor information we got from Quantivate and then collected
some additional due diligence data for each of the critical vendors through its
partner Paragon,” says William C. Hord VP of Enterprise Risk Management.
With Quantivate in place, Financial Center is now able to gain a clear,
centralized, and documented understanding of each of its vendors and
what it has to offer the business. The solution discourages taking the path
of least resistance. Vendors are no longer selected just because they meet
some budgetary requirement. This enables Financial Center to ensure it is
getting the best deal and the best available service. Most importantly, Financial
Center is now able to see and report on the risk introduced to each area of the
business, whereas it previously made contract decisions based solely on the
vendors’ last 3 years of financial statements and references.
Real-time, on-time, in-depth assessments
Because the old vendor management process was manual, Financial Center
would typically only look at its providers’ balance sheets, cash flows and
references. But with the Quantivate solution in place, Financial Center can
now take into account each vendor’s business/strategic impact, finances, legal
liabilities, regulatory compliance, market dependencies, information security,
reputation, human resource policies, relevant operational and transactional
considerations, and disaster recovery plans.
For example, some vendors can be renewed or replaced in 30 days, while
others may take 1 to 3 years to work through the program. If this is not
managed properly, a vendor might not get renewed in time, and may have to
wait until the next cycle to be approved.
Similarly, if a vendor no longer meets minimum requirements, Financial
Center can sever any existing relationships with incumbents to mitigate risk
and avoid potential damage to the business. For example, Financial Center
was hit and miss on its vendors’ insurance statuses. Now, Financial Center
consistently tracks all vendors and their insurance requirements and is
notified if a renewal hasn’t been received.
“Quantivate’s solution has proven invaluable because we initiate the
conversation with the vendor from a position of strength,” says Hord. “This
enables us to make business determinations of whether to simply seek better
pricing from an incumbent or to take on the task of doing a full vendor demo
and bid process which in and of itself can be a large resource drain.”
Success Story:
Finance Center Federal Credit Union
Business Benefit
• Make smarter decisions: Financial
Center has become smarter about
the people it does business with,
ensuring proper service levels
up and down the supply chain,
thereby minimizing the risk to its
business.
• Improve operational efficiency:
Financial Center has become
more proficient in its vendor
management program, saving
the company on further expenses
as it increases its footprint and
introduces new products.
• Make real-time decisions: With
the additional Quantivate solutions
in place, Financial Center is able
to make real-time decisions on
vendor selection, risk mitigation,
and business continuity planning.
• Meet regulatory guidelines:
The Quantivate solution enables
Financial Center to meet regulatory
guidelines spelled out in the
“NCUA Letter to Credit Unions
07-CU-13: Evaluating Third
Party Relationships”; NCUA’s
2007 regulatory guidance sets
forth comprehensive regulatory
requirements for vendor
management by credit unions
where NCUA examiners are
focusing on the following areas
of their vendor management
processes during regular
examinations:
i. A planning process, which
assesses the risk in the
relationship
ii. A due diligence process which
results in the credit union
developing an understanding
of the third party’s organization,
business model, and financial
health.
© Quantivate LLC 2014 • www.quantivate.com • sales@quantivate.com • 1-800-969-4107

4. Success Story:
Finance Center Federal Credit Union
Contact:
Corporate Address:
20250 144th Ave N.E., Suite 300
Woodinville, WA 98072
Mailing Address:
Quantivate, LLC
PO Box 1504
Woodinville, WA 98072
Telephone:
1-800-969-4107
Email:
sales@quantivate.com
info@quantivate.com
© Quantivate LLC 2014 • www.quantivate.com • sales@quantivate.com • 1-800-969-4107
About Quantivate
Quantivate is a provider of web-based Governance, Risk, and Compliance
(GRC) software and service solutions to organizations both large and small
nationwide. Founded in 2005 with the release of its Business Continuity
Software, the company has grown to feature a full suite of modules for
GRC including Business Continuity, Vendor Management, Enterprise Risk
Management, IT GRC, Internal Audit, and Regulatory Compliance.