Tens of Thousands of Third Parties Globally Being Trained and Educated in ABAC Policies and Codes of Conduct
BRANCHBURG, N.J., June 8, 2015 – Hiperos, an Opus Global company and the world’s leading provider of third-party management software announced today that tens of thousands of third parties are now being trained in anti-bribery/anti-corruption policies and codes of conduct using the firm’s automated third-party compliance training module.
The achievement has significance for the evolution of anti-bribery/anti-corruption (ABAC) programs within companies and the higher standards which can be achieved through mass automated ABAC training. Currently more than 50,000 third parties are being trained using the Hiperos 3PM™ platform.
Responsibility and accountability for training is pushed onto third parties themselves, requiring their CEOs or other appropriately authorized personnel to personally attest that all relevant staff have completed the training programs mandated by a Hiperos platform customer. As a result, third parties are taking the issue seriously. In one case alone, the CEO of a single third party had to attest that more than 8,000 individual employees had completed a mandated training program – a task completed in under two weeks.
“Training third parties has been a necessary but seemingly insurmountable compliance task up until now,” said Greg Dickinson, CEO of Hiperos. “The sheer scale of the challenge for big companies with thousands, or even tens of thousands, of third parties has resulted in incomplete and inadequate training. With companies being liable for the bribery and corruption activities of their third parties, ABAC training can no longer be ignored in a robust compliance program.
“Companies want to be confident that all their third parties are adhering to the same high standards as themselves. And when a new rule or standard is announced, they want to be able to distribute a training survey within 24 hours and have the bulk of completed third-party training confirmations returned in weeks if not days,” Dickinson said.
“A company should implement mechanisms designed to enforce its policies… [and] should sensitize third parties with which it interacts (for example, vendors, agents or consultants) to the company’s expectation that its partners are compliant. This means more than including boilerplate language in a contract. It means taking action…” said Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division, speaking at the Compliance Week 2015 conference in Washington, D.C., on May 19.
“It is also critical that compliance programs… are designed to prevent and detect particular types of misconduct likely to occur in a particular line of business,” she continued. “Corporations should be holding themselves accountable by designing compliance programs that don’t just look good on paper but actually work.”
In a Hiperos ABAC Training webinar held in May, attendees were polled about their programs. Only 16 percent said they conducted third-party training on a regular basis, while 45 percent either didn’t provide third-party training at all (37 percent) or didn’t know (8 percent). Of those that did perform third-party training, only 8 percent said they trained all third parties, while 38 percent said they only trained the “high-risk ones,” indicating significant gaps in coverage.
Link to Leslie Caldwell’s May 19 speech:
About Hiperos
Hiperos, an Opus Global company, is the leader in third-party management software, connecting over 380,000 third parties to many of the world’s largest companies across a range of industry verticals including energy, financial services, manufacturing, real estate, pharmaceuticals and technology. The company’s flagship product, Hiperos 3PM™, is the only solution in the market that is purpose-built to simultaneously minimize the risks of using third parties while maximizing the value they provide. Implemented by global 2000 companies and business consortiums to address their expanding third-party management requirements, Hiperos 3PM™ has become the industry’s most widely used SaaS-based third-party management solution. The winner of industry awards and accolades for the proven value and low cost of ownership it delivers, Hiperos 3PM™ enables companies to protect their brand and revenues by implementing an automated, consistent approach to third-party on-boarding, measurement, monitoring and controls, throughout their life cycle. Hiperos’ clients include many of the world’s leading companies such as Aetna, Alcoa, AON, Arrow Electronics, Astra Zeneca, AXA, Baker Hughes, Bank of Montreal, CA Technologies, Charles Schwab, Fulton Bank, Halliburton, Huntington Bank, JLL, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Mondelez, Microsoft, News Corporation, NYC Bancorp, Peabody, PNC Bank, Rockwell Automation, Sun Life Financial, State Street, TD Bank, United Technologies and Zion’s Bank. For more information, visit http://www.hiperos.com.
