FSA asks for feedback on Resilience Benchmarking discussion paper In today's climate of increased threats from both terrorism and natural disasters, it is critical that we understand how resilient the UK Financial sector would be in the face of major operational disruption. In a joint enterprise, the Triparties Authorities (Financial Services Authority, Bank of England and HM Treasury) together with more than 60 of the UK 's most significant firms and financial infrastructure providers, completed what is believed to be the most comprehensive study of financial sector resilience and recovery arrangements ever undertaken. The results of the study were published in December 2005. The survey aimed to answer the following questions: * How resilient is the UK financial sector? * How quickly could the sector recover from major operational disruption? * Do firms plan and prepare effectively? * Are there any concentrations or dependencies that could be potential areas of vulnerability? * What action is needed to improve the resilience or recovery capability of the sector? The results will be of interest to all firms, not just the major financial players, and have given a valuable picture of the overall business continuity preparedness of the UK financial sector, in particular as it relates to the core market and financial infrastructure functionality (such as wholesale payments, trade clearing and settlement) on which the sector as a whole depends. There are, however, several areas where there is scope for firms to improve their planning and preparation for major operational disruption. In particular, the sector would benefit from progressing from a strong, but heavily IT-focused, disaster recovery approach towards the adoption of more rounded business continuity principles. For example, firms could strengthen their arrangements by collaborating with key third parties such as infrastructure providers and service suppliers to bring about more co-ordinated planning, testing and risk mitigation. The survey also highlights the significant geographical concentration of some critical business functions and back-up sites in and around London . Moreover there is a high degree of reliance on financial infrastructure providers, on key providers of telecommunications facilities and on providers of disaster recovery facilities. These are issues the authorities will be taking forward with the participants themselves as well as with the relevant third parties. Each participating firm has received a detailed individual benchmarking report and has confirmed that it found the exercise beneficial, with several participants describing the experience as a 'wake up call'. When consulted, the overwhelming majority of participants confirmed that the project has heightened business continuity in firms and in the financial sector as a whole. More information on the project and a copy of the Discussion Paper is available at http://www.fsc.gov.uk/section.asp?catid=320&docid=942 . Comments on the Paper and feedback on the proposals it contains for further work are invited by the end of March 2006 and the authorities aim to publish a feedback statement by the end of May 2006.
•Date: 16th March 2006• Region: UK• Type: Article •Topic: Financial sector BC |
