KPMG Launches Enhancements to Global Solution, Astrus

Risk Management , Infrastructure
06.10.2016 12:15 pm

Companies cannot afford to do business with people or partners who might cause them irreparable damage down the road. This due diligence process becomes more complex as businesses become more global and interconnected. To address the increasing complexity, KPMG's Astrus, a proprietary solution, provides businesses with faster access to relevant information about third-party risk to make better-informed, immediate decisions. Today, KPMG announced new enhancements and monitoring capabilities to Astrus that provide access to an expanded range of data sources, as well as timely monitoring alerts to issues and events that may signal heightened third-party risk.

Last year, KPMG Capital announced its investment in Astrus, which helped drive the new flexible monitoring enhancements and customizable features. Today, Astrus helps businesses manage an expanding universe of third-party relationships, such as suppliers, agents and customers that have potential risks and increasingly complex regulatory requirements. Astrus' enhanced capabilities help identify problems before they occur so businesses can feel confident in their third-party integrity and due diligence programs.

Third-party risk profiles can change quickly in the cycles between risk-based due diligence updates. This clear need for current information on third parties led Astrus to develop market-leading monitoring products for businesses. The enhanced Astrus solution contains new data and analytics (D&A) capabilities that allow businesses to compile, assess and monitor third-party risk profiles based on the search and analysis of very large volumes of data.

Astrus Monitoring combines the power of cognitive search technology with proprietary KPMG research methodology to identify significant and potentially material adverse media or corporate information changes. Businesses can use Astrus Monitoring to augment regulatory "know your customer" compliance, to refresh third-party reference data and receive alerts to pending media issues, adverse events or reputational information.

Astrus also offers Enhanced Due Diligence reports that can fulfill information-gathering and due diligence requirements in response to regulatory measures. These include compliance with anti-bribery and corruption legislation, anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and other regulations around the world. Astrus sources include premium content aggregators, traditional and social media, open sources and the deep web, drawing upon over 40,000 data sources that can index data in more than 88 languages and reach more than 200 countries.

Organizations can now enhance their due diligence compliance programs with Astrus Monitoring to receive alerts to changes in corporate background details, operating status and negative media sentiment – areas with the potential to affect business relationships. KPMG analysts review all alerts and report only material events.

Additional enhanced features include functionality that address companies' needs to perform risk assessments of various third parties relating to: global regulations, emerging market risk, global sanctions and political exposure and ethical business standards.

"If a business doesn't know their third-party partners, they can be at risk," said Laura Durkin, Managing Director and Global Head of Astrus Operations. "Third-party integrity risk management isn't going to go away; it's only going to get more complex with increasing regulatory compliance requirements, tougher legislation and international pressures."

"We saw the need and opportunity to inject Astrus with a sophisticated set of D&A capabilities to offer risk analysis and assessment that is flexible, comprehensive and more intelligent – a solution that can address a variety of risk levels," said Mark Toon, CEO of KPMG Capital.

"All it takes is one negligent supplier, an incident of executive impropriety or a reported case of bribery from a distant vendor to expose an organization to irreparable reputational damage," said Durkin. "Astrus Monitoring can provide early warning of impending risk."