KPMG has launched its 'Third Party Intelligence' system, a digital data resource on third-party suppliers for companies.

The product was developed by KPMG Spectrum, a division of KPMG that develops intelligence engines that combine advanced technologies and the firm's intellectual capital.

The aim of Third Party Intelligence is to pre-empt third-party disruption by monitoring and reporting on third-party vulnerability and forecasting the effects this could have in future. It uses data sources including financials from thousands of third parties in 90 countries, as well as millions of news feeds, websites, and blogs from 48 countries.

Larry Raff, head of KPMG Spectrum, said: “Third Party Intelligence allows us to alert clients to vulnerabilities in advance, giving businesses the insight to act ahead of time and potentially avoid disruption altogether.”

In a statement KPMG said: “Instead of filtering and presenting data to clients, sophisticated algorithms pinpoint and project vulnerability trends in individual third parties and the countries in which they operate. This makes Third Party Intelligence’s insight actionable – a key differentiator from risk data providers who leave this analysis to the client.”

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CTMfile Take: Taking third-party risk into account is one of the core skills in corporate treasury – as outlined on CTMfile in this article. But understanding such complex risk requires insight into your supplier's or bank's business model and assessing its viability, it also involves monitoring not just financial data but also the third party's exposure to other risks, such as cyber crime or natural disaster, not to mention measuring the third party's performance. It would be amazing if KPMG's Third Party Intelligence product were able to cover all these bases but it has the potential to provide useful support in the task of monitoring supplier/third-party risk.