Operational Resilience calls for contract support
Operational Resilience (OR) requires businesses to adequately prevent, respond to, recover from and learn from operational disruptions. It is not a new priority but with an increasing number of high-profile incidents and the significance of the Bank of England, PRA and FCA coming together to formally address the topic in a discussion paper, gives rise to its importance.
With customer welfare and market stability at stake for the regulators and profits and reputations to protect for firms, scrutiny and demands and the consequent response is only going to increase.
While the ‘Building the UK financial sector’s operational resilience’ discussion paper is only an overarching framework, companies should be ensuring they pay attention to the points raised. It calls for focus and accountability at board level, requiring senior management to raise the bar. They are being asked to shift their approach to create a resilient culture that protects and prevents rather than fixes.
IT solutions are no longer enough in their entirety; a resilient strategy needs to be integrated across the whole of the company’s ecosystem. Firms must clearly articulate their operational risk appetite and impact tolerance for disruptions. They must also plan for disruptions (which includes the communication of issues to their customers, the regulators and the wider market). Throughout, there is a demand for metrics and monitoring and widespread performance and resilience testing.
Full proof OR is challenging, not only because of external factors such as technology, customer demands, advancing cyber threats and more complex ecosystems but internally with legacy systems, costs and resources.
Firms are reviewing the capabilities of their existing workforce and realising the benefit of contractors. Contractors offer an increased workforce to manage the greater volume of work but more importantly bring specialist skills and experience into the team. This works flexibly against work demands without permanent commitment and headcount.
We have a bench of over 600 fully vetted and highly skilled professionals. They could provide interim or consultancy support within as little as 48 hours at very competitive rates. If you would like to discuss your OR requirements, please get in touch.
