US agencies provide financial institutions with hurricane-related business continuity advice

The member agencies of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors have announced the publication of ‘Lessons Learned From Hurricane Katrina: Preparing Your Institution for a Catastrophic Event’. The booklet captures the experiences of various financial institutions' in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and highlights lessons that other institutions may find helpful in considering their readiness for a future catastrophic event.

Following Hurricane Katrina, institutions' existing disaster recovery and business continuity plans generally worked well in enabling institutions to restore operations swiftly. However, the unprecedented destruction and aftermath of the hurricane caused major disruptions that exceeded the scope of some institutions' disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

Major hardships faced by these institutions included the following:

* Communications outages made it difficult to locate missing personnel.

* Access to and reliable transportation into restricted areas were not always available.

* Lack of electrical power or fuel for generators rendered computer systems inoperable.

* Multiple facilities were destroyed or sustained significant damage.

* Some branches and ATMs were under water for weeks.

* Mail service was interrupted for months in some areas.

The lessons learned booklet is available at http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/resources/lessons/index.html

•Date: 16th June 2006• Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: Financial sector
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