General Bank of Canada had a clear ambition: expand its role in North America's open banking ecosystem. Its vendor-risk processes needed to support that growth, rather than become a barrier to new partnerships.
Manual document reviews, slow onboarding, and inconsistent assessments made that harder. As assets and partnerships grew, the existing approach created delays and pressure on the risk team.
With Coverbase, the bank brought its vendor-risk information together, automated more of the review work, and built a more consistent monitoring process. The platform went live in less than six weeks.
Build a program that can grow
The bank's earlier approach relied on spreadsheets, separate systems, and resource-intensive reviews. Human judgment remained essential, but variation in the process made consistent evaluations difficult.
Laura Valente, Chief Privacy Officer and Non-Financial Risk Manager, described the risk of continuing that way:
We would have had significant delays and been unable to scale… More importantly, the business would have started seeing risk management as a blocker, leading to potential regulatory and reputational risks.
Coverbase gave the team a central repository for vendor-risk data and a way to identify trends and monitor relationships beyond a static, point-in-time assessment.
“Using Coverbase, we’re able to unlock our vision of becoming a vendor partnership superpower in the open banking ecosystem of North America.”
Move through due diligence faster
Traditional reviews required skilled personnel to work through hundreds of pages of documentation line by line. That effort lengthened the path to a new partnership.
Meghan Paonessa, Risk Partner Specialist, described the work:
The process was extremely labor-intensive, requiring skilled personnel to review documents line by line.
Due diligence and risk assessments became 77% faster, while average vendor onboarding fell from 60 days to 14 days. The team could spend more attention on high-risk issues instead of routine paperwork. Automation reduced manual workloads by as much as 80%.
Structured reporting also helped General Bank of Canada (GBC) address Canadian third-party risk requirements. The bank reported a 40% improvement in the consistency of vendor-risk evaluations.
Make monitoring a regular practice
Before Coverbase, assessments happened at fixed intervals and ongoing monitoring was more ad hoc. That left gaps between reviews.
The team moved toward a structured, continuous process for monitoring third-party relationships. New information could become part of the risk picture before the next scheduled assessment.
As Paonessa put it:
We now have a well-oiled machine… Ongoing monitoring used to be ad hoc. Now, it’s a structured and consistent process.
GBC also worked with Coverbase to refine the platform around its needs. Adam Ennamli, Chief Risk Officer, described that working relationship:
This wasn’t just a one-size-fits-all tool… Coverbase worked with us to refine and improve the solution, making us feel like true partners in innovation.
Turn capacity into partnerships
GBC expanded its vendor partnerships by 30% in six months, using automation to manage and mitigate risk as the network grew. Paonessa described the pace:
Using Coverbase, we’ve been able to onboard more vendors in the past six months than in the previous few years combined… We’re now able to maintain a rigorous third-party risk posture while also moving at the speed of business.
For the risk team, the goal was not simply to complete the same tasks faster. It was to support the bank's growth while demonstrating how its processes met regulatory expectations. Valente described how that fits the regulatory approach:
Principle-based regulations give us the flexibility to adopt best-in-class tools while maintaining compliance… Coverbase enables us to demonstrate excellence in how we implement these regulatory principles.
The result was a more scalable program: faster onboarding, more consistent evaluations, and ongoing monitoring that could keep pace with a larger partner ecosystem.
As Ennamli put it:
We want to be risk innovators, not just risk practitioners… Coverbase helps us unlock the value trapped in traditional, outdated methodologies.
“We went from a 2D to a 3D perspective.”
