New developments in business continuity management: new prescriptive BCM regulations within Asia-Pacific countries will have significant implications for many financial institutions that are outsourcing large parts of their operations within the region.(TECHNOLOGY SUPPLEMENT)

Publication: Journal of Banking and Financial Services

Publication Date: 01-JUN-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Australian Institute of Banking and Finance

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the process of minimising the interruption of business operations and services in the event of a major incident.

Whereas previously BCM planning had been a relatively straightforward matter, in recent years, financial services organisations and regulators globally have been forced to re-address these issues in the wake of September 11, utilities failures, electronic attacks and SARS. Operators in the Asia-Pacific region are also facing new BCM compliance requirements and there is no room for complacency on this.

Financial services have a relatively high level of BCM capability

A recent KPMG Asia-Pacific BCM Benchmarking survey of 249 organisations from all of the major industries in the region found that the financial services have a mature approach to BCM compared with other sectors (see Figure 1).

The survey indicated that 51 per cent of financial services participants had corporate-wide business continuity plans in effect, compared with only 33 per cent of the total survey population.

Regulators are raising the bar, however, and expect increasing and ongoing attention to be given to BCM....

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