Financial Firms Ahead of Business Continuity Curve, Says Survey
April 28, 2008
Financial services employees better understand their companies’ business continuity planning (BCP) strategies and are more prepared for an emergency than those in other industries, according to a survey of U.K. businesses.
The study, conducted by London-based research consultancy YouGov, found that 91 percent of financial services employees are aware of their firm’s continuity plans, compared to 64 percent across all sectors. Connectivity provider BT Global Services, a unit of U.K.-based BT Group, commissioned the report, which was based on a survey of individuals in financial services, construction, media and leisure, professional services, the public sector, retail, transport, and logistics and utilities.
“The key to coping with unplanned systems downtime is a robust business continuity plan that is well communicated to employees, enabling them to react quickly and effectively,” said Andy Nicholson, managing director of the finance sector for BT Global Services, in a statement issued last week. “The research shows that the financial services industry is better than any other at communicating its business continuity plans.”
While most BCP studies focus on C-level executives and key decisionmakers, YouGov in early February questioned rank-and-file employees who carry out the strategies. The majority of the 752 individuals surveyed--88 in financial services--said they felt responsible for helping their employer recover from a disaster. All respondents were from companies with more than 500 staffers.
The study said that financial services employees were the most conscientious: 72 percent said they felt a responsibility to help the company get up and running after a disaster--compared to 61 percent across the other categories--and 78 percent said they would return to work as soon as possible after an event such as a flood, fire or IT failure. Seventy-two percent of financial services staff thought management relied more on employees to return to normal operations than any business continuity plans.
Howard Sprow, VP of business continuity at the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (Sifma), did not find the numbers surprising. “The financial services business continuity planning community has worked hard to develop resources to effectively deal with disasters at the local and global levels,” he said. “The results of industrywide testing have revealed the ability of firms to handle a wide range of challenges posed in testing scenarios.”
In late January, the Treasury Department released the results of a pandemic testing exercise for the U.S. financial services industry, sponsored by the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council, Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee and Sifma. During the exercise, which simulated a 12-week pandemic wave over three weeks, “even businesses that had pandemic plans in place found a global avian flu outbreak poses complex issues and were able to identify areas where more work was needed,” said Valerie Abend, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for critical infrastructure protection and compliance policy.
The U.S. test, which involved 2,700 organizations, found that in periods of high absenteeism, many organizations would rely more heavily on telecommuting, which raised concerns about those employees taxing less robust infrastructures in residential areas. And 52 percent of large securities firms experienced problems in their essential operations such as electronic trading and market data distribution.
In late 2006, a U.K. pandemic stress test was conducted by the Bank of England, Treasury and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), with 3,500 participants. According to a joint report, during the test “virtually all trading was conducted on-site as firms were not comfortable that they would be able to maintain a sufficient level of compliance and control to allow trading from home on a prolonged basis.” Yet on-site trading would likely shut down during an extended pandemic.
