In this featured article, our Director of Market Engagement, Steve Gilde, shares details on what COVID-19 has taught us and how this pandemic has demonstrated that payments testing is mission critical and business continuity plans (BCP) should be taken seriously..
COVID-19 is giving a whole new meaning to the term "operational resiliency."
While every bank should have an existing business continuity plan (BCP) that outlines their strategy for responding to and recovering from service interruptions such as natural disasters and cyberattacks, not even the most prescient BCP planners could have predicted COVID-19 and its impact on the global economy. Major U.S. cities have been brought to a standstill, states are invoking “shelter-in-place” orders and entire countries are effectively shut down. These are truly extraordinary events and there is no end in sight.
The requirements for what belongs in a BCP are rather loose. Most industry guidelines use words like “should” and “could” and “may,” and as a result, the quality of the BCP is dependent on the commitment made by the specific organization. Because it is so difficult to predict disruptive events and the impact they will have (think natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and blizzards), each company has to make its own value judgments about what they can and will plan for.