How Does The Hellios Shared Assurance Model Work For Supplier And Third-Party Risk Management?

What Is The Hellios Shared Assurance Model?

The Hellios shared assurance model brings buyers and suppliers into a common, standardised framework for supplier and third-party risk management.

Instead of each organisation designing its own questionnaires, chasing evidence, and validating data independently, Hellios operates a centralised assurance process on behalf of buyer communities through platforms such as FSQS and JOSCAR.

The result is a model that reduces duplication, improves data quality, and supports consistent, defensible risk decisions - without removing control from individual organisations.

Why Organisations Choose A Shared Assurance Community

Many organisations reach a point where managing supplier and third-party risk internally becomes inefficient and unsustainable.

Common challenges include:

• High administrative effort collecting, validating, and reporting supplier data

• Navigating complex and evolving regulations in isolation

• Maintaining supplier compliance throughout long contract lifecycles

• Inconsistent supplier data across teams and systems

• Excessive friction and delay when onboarding new suppliers

These pressures increase operational risk and place unnecessary strain on both buyers and suppliers.

How The Shared Assurance Model Works In Practice

The Hellios shared assurance model is designed to address the exact challenges organisations face when supplier and third-party risk management becomes inefficient, fragmented, and difficult to sustain.

Hellios manages the assurance process end to end, removing the need for each organisation to build and maintain its own parallel processes.

Inviting suppliers into the FSQS and JOSCAR communities

Suppliers are onboarded into a single, structured assurance environment rather than responding to multiple, one-off requests from different buyers. This significantly reduces onboarding friction, shortens lead times, and removes repetitive data collection that slows procurement activity.

By replacing fragmented, one-to-one assurance requests with a shared model, suppliers experience less disruption, clearer expectations, and a more consistent engagement process - improving supplier satisfaction and strengthening long-term relationships.

Guiding suppliers through structured, standardised questionnaires

Assurance requirements are clearly defined, consistent across the community, and aligned to regulatory and industry expectations. This eliminates variation between teams and systems, helping organisations avoid inconsistent data capture and conflicting interpretations of risk.

To support this process, Hellios provides dedicated supplier support teams who guide suppliers through the questionnaires step by step. Support is available via email, phone, and live chat, helping suppliers understand requirements, answer questions, and submit accurate information first time.

By managing supplier queries centrally, Hellios removes a significant administrative burden from buyers - reducing follow-up, rework, and delays, while improving the overall quality and completeness of assurance data.

Validating assurance data and maintaining refresh cycles

Supplier information is checked, reviewed, and refreshed on defined cycles, ensuring buyers are not relying on outdated, incomplete, or self-attested data. This reduces the ongoing administrative effort required to monitor compliance across long contract lifecycles and supports continuous oversight rather than point-in-time checks.

Providing buyers with dashboards, reporting, and actionable insight

Assurance data is presented in a structured, comparable format that supports prioritisation, audit readiness, and informed decision-making. Teams no longer need to manually reconcile data across spreadsheets or systems to understand supplier risk exposure.

By managing these activities centrally, Hellios removes the need for organisations to navigate evolving regulations, supplier engagement, and data validation in isolation. The result is a consistent assurance baseline that reduces operational risk, improves data quality, and eases the burden on both buyers and suppliers.

How Does Hellios Centralise Assurance Without Removing Decision-Making Control?

The Hellios shared assurance model centralises data and process, not decision-making.

Organisations retain full control over:

• Their own risk appetite

• How assurance data is interpreted

• Which actions are taken in response to identified risks

Hellios does not determine who organisations should or should not work with. Instead, we provide a consistent, validated evidence base that supports informed decision-making across procurement, risk, compliance, and audit teams.

What changes is that all teams work from the same trusted information, making risk decisions more consistent, defensible, and easier to justify - both internally and to regulators.

Why Shared Assurance Works Better Than Managing Risk Alone

At its core, the Hellios model is built on a simple principle: no organisation should have to manage supplier and third-party risk alone.

By combining end-to-end assurance management with a shared community model, Hellios helps organisations:

• Reduce complexity and red tape

• Improve confidence in supplier compliance

• Strengthen oversight across complex supply chains

• Focus on managing risk - not managing paperwork

The result is a simpler, more resilient approach to supplier and third-party risk management, built on shared standards, trusted data, and collective strength.