Report shows gaps in financial firms' continuity plans

Most firms could recover up to 80 per cent of operations within four hours, says report

The UK financial services industry would benefit from stronger and more heavily IT-focused business continuity plans, according to a report on the sector’s ability to cope with major operational disruptions such as terrorist attacks.

The industry was found to have ‘highly resilient’ IT systems that could recover quickly from a disruption, although a heavy concentration of backup sites in London was flagged as a concern.

The report says most companies could recover 60 to 80 per cent of their normal operations within four hours, and 80 to 100 per cent by the next day.

But several gaps in IT planning and testing schemes were highlighted.

Some 17 firms have no policy of testing their outsourcing suppliers’ disaster recovery capabilities, 12 have not tested critical backup tapes in the past six months, and eight have not tested mirrored IT systems with the primary system turned off.

The financial incentives for testing are strong: the report says businesses stand to lose between £500,000 and £25m per day for suspending or curtailing operations.
The Resilience Benchmarking Project, led by HM Treasury, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Bank of England, surveyed more than 60 of the UK’s financial services firms to gauge their disaster recovery processes.

‘Almost all participant firms have already indicated that they are planning
to make changes to their business continuity arrangements as a result of what they have learned,’ said Hector Sants, managing director of the FSA’s wholesale firms division.