How a Regional U.S. Bank Uses Owlin for Vendor Monitoring

The client

This client is a prominent U.S. regional bank with more than 100 years of history. The bank provides a full range of services, including commercial and small business banking, personal banking, wealth management, and trust services. The organization manages a complex vendor ecosystem to provide its services to its clients. 

As a regulated financial institution, the bank prioritizes strong governance, operational resilience, and continuous oversight of third-party risk, particularly across financial and regulatory dimensions.

The challenge

Like many banks, the organization is increasingly exposed to third-party and counterparty risk through vendors, service providers, and partners. Adverse events involving any of these parties, such as financial distress, regulatory violations, or reputational damage, can result in regulatory scrutiny, financial loss, or brand impact.

The bank operates in a highly regulated environment where expectations for third-party risk management are very explicit. The Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships emphasizes that banks must continuously monitor third-party relationships throughout the vendor lifecycle, not only at onboarding. To meet regulatory expectations and maintain a defensible compliance posture, the bank needed a scalable way to support continuous oversight without increasing manual workload.

Before using Owlin, the bank relied on a combination of legacy tools and manual processes to monitor adverse media. Analysts spent significant time conducting manual searches, reviewing fragmented news sources, and assessing relevance and risk. Coverage gaps and inconsistent results made it difficult to maintain confidence in the monitoring process or demonstrate continuous due diligence to regulators.

The bank needed a solution to:

• Continuously monitor vendors for adverse media, PEPs, and sanctions
• Detect early warning signals related to financial and regulatory risks
• Reduce manual research and analyst workload
• Monitor their complete vendor portfolio throughout the lifecycle automatically
• Support regulatory requirements such as third-party risk management, AML, and ongoing due diligence
• Provide a clear and auditable way to track and escalate potential risks

The solution

The bank implemented Owlin’s AI-driven monitoring solution to strengthen its vendor risk oversight. Owlin continuously scans global news sources, PEPs, and sanctions to surface relevant risk events, delivering timely alerts directly to the bank’s risk and procurement teams.

Owlin supports the bank throughout the vendor lifecycle by:

• Identifying adverse media, PEP, and sanctions risks during onboarding and due diligence
• Monitoring vendors continuously post-onboarding for emerging issues
• Highlighting financial, regulatory, and reputational risks

Rather than relying heavily on dashboards, the bank’s teams primarily use Owlin’s alerts to stay informed. A designated primary user reviews alerts daily, ensuring that potential risks are quickly assessed and escalated when necessary.

Owlin enables the bank to:

• Receive real-time alerts on adverse media, PEPs, and sanctions affecting vendors and counterparties
• Reduce time spent on manual research and unstructured news searches
• Improve consistency and confidence in third-party risk monitoring
• Provide regulators with clearer evidence of continuous monitoring and risk awareness

The impact

By leveraging Owlin, the bank has significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of its vendor risk screening and monitoring. Analysts save time, gain better visibility into emerging risks, and can act earlier when adverse events occur.

Owlin has become a critical component of the bank’s risk management framework, helping teams monitor vendors through financial, regulatory, and reputational lenses while supporting compliance in a highly regulated environment. Key measurable outcomes include:

• 40% reduction in manual vendor monitoring time. Analysts can now focus on risk assessment and mitigation rather than sifting through fragmented news sources.
• Real-time coverage of 100% of monitored vendors. Alerts on adverse media, PEPs, and sanctions ensure no emerging risks go unnoticed.
• Improved regulatory readiness and auditability. The bank can provide clear, evidence-backed reporting to demonstrate continuous vendor oversight and compliance with Interagency Guidance.