NASHVILLE, Tenn., June 22, 2026 – Ncontracts, the leading provider of integrated compliance, risk, and vendor management solutions to the financial industry, today announced the release of The Upside of Third-Party Risk Management: The Practitioner's Guide to Turning Vendor Risk into Strategic Value, the third book in the company's Upside Series: Strategic Success for Financial Institutions.
Co-authored by risk management veteran Michael Carpenter and Ncontracts founder and CEO Michael Berman, the book builds on the series' core premise that compliance and risk functions are strategic assets, not administrative burdens. Written for real-world practitioners, the guide provides actionable frameworks they can use to protect their organization from operational disruption and create a measurable competitive advantage.
"Most organizations already have vendor management programs in place," said Carpenter. "What this book addresses is the gap between a program that satisfies requirements and one that actually reduces exposure and improves operational performance."
The book walks through the vendor management lifecycle end to end, from strategy and risk appetite to due diligence, contracting, and performance monitoring. A central theme is ecosystem thinking, recognizing that vendors don't operate in isolation, and that risk accumulates across integrations, dependencies, and shared systems in ways that traditional oversight approaches often miss.
"Effective third-party risk management isn't dictated by the size of your institution or how long you've had a program," said Berman. "It's about whether your program is connected to how the business operates. This book provides the roadmap to make that connection — wherever you're starting from.”