The building blocks of any compliance program lay the foundations for a best practices compliance program. For instance, in the life cycle management of third parties, most compliance practitioners understand the need for a business justification, questionnaire, due diligence, evaluation and compliance terms and conditions in contracts. However, as many companies mature in their compliance programs, the issue of third-party management becomes more important. It is also the one where the rubber meets the road of operationalizing compliance. It is also an area the DOJ specifically articulated in the 2019 Evaluation that companies need to consider.
The key is to have a strategic approach to how you structure and manage your third-party relationships. This may mean more closely partnering with your third parties to help manage the anti-corruption compliance risk. It would certainly lead towards enabling your company to control risk while optimizing the performance of your third parties.
Amalgamate third-parties but have fallbacks. It is incumbent to consolidate your third-party relationships to a smaller number to more fully operationalize your compliance program. This will make the entire third-party lifecycle easier to manage. From the compliance perspective, you may want to have a primary and secondary third-party that you work with in a service line or geographic area to retain this redundancy.
Monitor any subcontracted work. If your direct contracting party has the right or will need to subcontract some work out, you need to have visibility into this from the compliance perspective. You will need to require and monitor that your direct third-party relationship has your approved compliance terms and conditions in their contracts with their subcontractors.
Legal Protections. This is where your compliance terms and conditions will come into play. Consider a full indemnity if your third-party violates the FCPA and your company is dragged into an investigation because of the third-party’s actions. Another important clause is that any FCPA violation is a material breach of contract. This means that you can legally, under the terms of the contract, terminate it immediately, with no requirement for notice and cure. Finally, you need a clause that requires your third-party to cooperate in any compliance investigation. This means cooperation with you and your designated investigation team, but it may also mean cooperation with U.S. governmental authorities as well.
Keep track of your third parties’ financial stability. This is one area that is not usually discussed in the compliance arena around third parties, but it seems almost self-evident. You can certainly imagine the disruption that could occur if your prime third-party supplier in a country or region went bankrupt; but in the compliance realm there is another untoward red flag that is raised in such circumstances. Those third parties under financial pressure may be more easily persuaded to engage in bribery and corruption than third parties that stand on a more solid financial footing.
Formalize incentives for third-party performance. One of the key elements for any third-party contract is the compensation issue. If the commission rate is too high, it could create a very large pool of money that could be used to pay bribes.
Auditing third parties. Critical to any best practices compliance program and an important tool in operationalizing your compliance program, this is a key manner in which a company can manage the third-party relationship after the contract is signed and one which the government will expect you to engage in going forward.
Three key takeaways:
- Have a strategic approach to third-party risk management.
- Rank third parties based upon a variety of factors including compliance and business performance, length of relationship, benchmarking metrics and KPIs for ongoing monitoring and auditing.
- Managing the relationship is where the real work begins.
