EY Vendor Due Diligence: Surfacing Reputational Risk in NGO Assessments
Assessed NGOs for a pharmaceutical client's donation program, surfacing a reputational risk flag with limited public registry data.
Saket Kumar
Associate - Research at Trademo
From their time as
Project Analyst
EY • 2024 - 2025
Overview
Saket was part of the EY Forensic and Integrity team supporting a UK-based pharmaceutical client that wanted to make donations to NGOs and societies in India. His task was to assess a shortlist of candidate organizations and identify any reputational or integrity risks before the client committed funds.
The Story
Saket was part of the EY Forensic and Integrity team supporting a UK-based pharmaceutical client that wanted to make donations to NGOs and societies in India. His task was to assess a shortlist of candidate organizations and identify any reputational or integrity risks before the client committed funds.
The challenge was that NGO-level information in India is sparse on standard registries. For most of the targets, he had to piece together the picture from organizational websites, LinkedIn presence, media coverage, and where available, MCA filings. The research required judgment about which sources were credible and how to weight partial information.
During the assessment, Saket identified that a key principal of one of the candidate NGOs was subject to a serious allegation that was still under active litigation with no verdict. He flagged the finding in the report and included a clear caveat noting that the matter was pending and the information was provided for awareness rather than as a confirmed adverse finding.
The client received the report and used it to make their donation decision. Saket's approach, surfacing the risk clearly while framing it with the appropriate caveat, gave the client the information they needed without overstating what the evidence actually showed.