All terms

Attestation

Attestation — An attestation is a formal assertion about the design or operation of controls — either a management certification or an independent practitioner's report such as a SOC report — relied on by a bank in lieu of, or alongside, its own testing of a third party.

The June 2023 interagency third-party guidance contemplates both forms: in due diligence a banking organization "may consider reviewing System and Organization Control (SOC) reports and any conformity assessment or certification by independent third parties," while also weighing whether the scope and results are actually relevant to the activity being performed. In contract negotiation it directs attention to what reports the bank is entitled to receive — "for example, SOC reports, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance reports, or other financial and operational reviews" — and to reserving audit rights. The SOC framework itself is an AICPA attestation standard, not a government one, which is why a bank cannot treat a SOC 2 as a substitute for compliance testing of FDCPA-specific controls; the two cover different populations.

See also

• TPRMTPRM, or third-party risk management, is the bank discipline of identifying and managing the risks arising from business arrangements with outside parties — including the law firms and agencies to which it places collections work — across the full life cycle of the relationship.
• SamplingSampling is the selection of a subset of accounts, calls, letters, or files for transaction testing, sized and structured to support a conclusion about the compliance of the whole population.
• ExaminationAn examination is a supervisory review conducted by a prudential regulator or the CFPB to assess compliance with federal consumer financial law, obtain information about an entity's activities and compliance systems, and detect risks to consumers and markets.
• Three-way reconciliationA three-way reconciliation proves that the trust account's general ledger balance, the sum of all individual client ledger balances, and the adjusted bank statement balance are identical as of the same date.

Where this appears

• How banks audit their collection law firms
• Client oversight — the bank window, which ships as Glass

This is an informational reference, not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitations periods turn on facts this page cannot know — which state's law governs, the contract type, when the claim accrued, and whether anything tolled or revived it. Confirm against the primary source and your own counsel before acting.