Improving Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Frameworks

Challenge

Our client is a European Bank with a strong UK presence, focusing on providing highly personalised and localised banking services. 

An internal audit reviewed the business continuity (BC or BCM) and disaster recovery (DR) frameworks and processes across the UK branches and found some area of potential improvement.

The audit requested a BCM service improvement plan to support the UK IT Strategy focusing on better alignment with Group, Regulatory and ISO standards. The primary driver was process improvement so ensure the bank could demonstrate a significant improvement in its operational planning and testing in the event of a threat to its branch network materialising.

Additionally, the service improvement plan required the bank to look at the relationships with third party suppliers particularly those involved in critical business processes such as payments.

Solution

Mason Advisory undertook a full review of the UK’s bank business continuity framework to identify areas for improvement including the control standards undertaken by the banks existing team.

The Group standards were overlayed with best practice guidance by the Mason Advisory team. The review included updating the existing BCM templates for Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Business Continuity Plan (BCP), Control Standards and an updated set of Policy, Framework and Standards documents.

A series of recommendations were included with the Mason Advisory final report which included changes to governance schedules, testing, training, and communications around the branch and HQ business owners.

The Mason Advisory team also helped construct the improvement plan with the banks BCM team supporting the senior IT leaders in rolling out a roadmap, timetable and engagement model in their communications across the wider business network.

Outcome

The resulting 20-week engagement reviewed, revised, and established the service improvement plan. The Client’s Group business continuity principles were applied throughout and a number on revised templates were created during the project which became standards for the UK branch network and business groups. Additionally, a renewed focus on the Banks critical business processes was established through the revamped BIA template and process which allowed the Bank to refresh, update, and amend submissions to the regulatory bodies in relation to risk.

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