Guide

A practical third-party risk process for a small fintech

When you rely on vendors for payments, data, infrastructure or KYC, you inherit their risk. Regulators and sponsor banks increasingly expect you to manage that, and a small team can do it well without a heavyweight program, as long as the process is consistent and documented.

Tier before you diligence

Not every vendor deserves the same scrutiny. Tiering by the risk they introduce, how critical they are and what data they touch, lets you spend your diligence where it matters and move quickly on the rest. Doing the same deep review on everyone is how small teams stall.

Diligence, contract, monitor

For higher-tier vendors: a due-diligence review, the right contractual clauses, and ongoing monitoring rather than a one-time check at onboarding. The monitoring is the part most programs skip, and it is the part that catches the problem before it becomes yours.

One place to run it

The Protocol Collective's vendor and third-party risk dashboards give tiering, a diligence rubric and a monitoring cadence in one owned file, paid once, updated for life. Built from public frameworks.

Explore The Protocol Collective

General information about compliance and program structure, not regulatory, legal, tax or financial advice, and no promise of any examination or audit outcome. Built from public frameworks.