Page 15 - Risk Management Bulletin April-June 2022

RMAI BULLETIN APRIL - JUNE 2022

WHAT DOES THE

FUTURE HOLD FOR

BLOCKCHAIN

WITHIN THIRD-

PARTY RISK

MANAGEMENT?

I s risk and compliance one of the organizational there’s another much-feted new kid on the block that’s

areas that will benefit from the emergence of
causing quite a stir: blockchain.
blockchain? Kevin Spiers looks at blockchain
opportunities within third-party risk Described by Bill Gates as a “technological tour de
management and asks whether the reality lives up to force”, blockchain has its origins in cryptocurrency but
the hype? its application extends far beyond. “Blockchain will be
transformational across most industries,” says Gartner.
The benefits of using technology to manage third-party
risk are not lost on compliance professionals. When Blockchain: what is it and where did it come from?
you consider the growing size, complexity and A blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that is
geographic diversity of companies’ third-party duplicated and distributed across the entire network
ecosystems, it’s easy to see why. 60 percent of of computer systems on the blockchain. Each block in
organizations now work with more than 1,000 third the chain contains a number of transactions, and every
parties and managing the risks of doing business with time a new transaction is made, a record of that
them is both costly and cumbersome. transaction is added to every participant’s ledger. This
makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or
Big data, AI, robotic process automation, and machine cheat the system, which is one of the aspects that
learning are just makes it so appealing.
About the author some of the
technologie s Blockchain was originally implemented as the public
Kevin Spiers compliance teams ledger for transactions made using Bitcoin, the
Head of Professional Services are using to rise to decentralised digital currency. However, since its
ethiXbase
the challenge. But cryptocurrency beginnings, blockchain has gone on to

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