Banking and Financial Service

The challenge

The banking landscape is changing rapidly with the emergence of FinTech non-bank start-up rivals, new technologies, platforms, and customer touch-points that encourage customers to demand a 24x7 personalised service. Banks also have a reduced branch footprint and lower staff levels, outsourced critical functions, reduced use of cash, increased cybercrime, money laundering, data breaches, and privacy concerns, and ever-tightening regulatory and compliance requirements.

The total technology reliance requires system integrity, security, resilience and the ability to quickly recover core systems & communications. Management and staff wage battle with competitors to provide points of differentiation in a highly competitive market to retain / increase their precious market share.

Significant financial shock events such as the GFC and Covid-19 demand a major crisis level response coordinated by the Reserve Bank. In addition, the old bread and butter risk scenarios must be addressed including the loss of a critical site, prolonged systems / Internet failure or data corruption / sabotage, scandal, major privacy breach, loss of a critical outsourced service provider, and a worst-nightmare liquidity crisis / run on funds.

The challenge for Banking BCM is the level of business / technology complexity, the extensive compliance environment, delicate / time-critical operations that make testing difficult, a very busy executive that is reluctant to participate in exercises making them a high risk to facilitate and technology teams that need to drive a failure recovery process.

Banking and Financial Services business continuity issues and risk scenarios

How FastTrack can assist

Business Continuity issues and high impact risk scenarios

Wide range of services - consumer/retail, commercial, wholesale, mortgage, securitisation, capital markets, insurance and investment management
• Emerging banking Fin Tech channels including mobile digital technologies
• Competitive environment, profitability and cost cutting
• Threat of online scams, money laundering, organised crime, terrorism and tax evasion
• Strong regulation and compliance requirements
• Heavy reliance on continued IT systems and voice communications
• Major exposure to cyber-attack and loss of IT systems / data and voice communications
• Pandemic – prolonged closure, site infection, social distancing, staff working from home, cleaning routines, loss of key service provider
• Exposure to critical customer facing outsourced service providers
• Complex technology infrastructure
• Liquidity crisis exposure leading to an uncontrollable run on funds
• Need to continue settlement capability
• Double impact investment banking incident that triggers a sudden market downturn (terrorist event) and impacts ability of the bank to respond (buy, sell, margin calls etc.)
• Executive management are time poor and lack engagement to actively participate
• Overly complex and ineffective multi-layered legacy crisis management team structures that put decision making executives away from the front-line crisis team
• Heavy use of BCP templates that generate large volumes of academic impractical plans
• Risk likelihood discounting significant exposures as a justification not to prepare for responding to and recovering from scenarios
• Ill prepared for catastrophic widespread disaster events that affect infrastructure, operations, staff availability and customer assets / security
• Major economic shock events (pandemic, global financial crisis, foot and mouth disease outbreak, earthquake etc.)
• Widespread and prolonged loss of the Internet

Our BCM services

• BCM governance, policy, standards, guidelines and socialisation training
• BCM benchmark assessment / audit
• Crisis scenario analysis and playbook plan development
• Crisis simulations and drill exercises
• Crisis management command centre location selection and fit out specification
• Liquidity, terrorism and other worst-case scenario crisis response planning and rehearsal
• Crisis communications drill training
• Business criticality / impact assessment
• Displacement strategies for the loss of key facilities
• Development of critical facilities backup
• Physical security testing

Banking and Financial Services - Focal points

Client references

What our clients say

“FastTrack provided a range of focused crisis management and business continuity services that ideally suited the unique and complex requirements of an international airport. FastTrack helped to prepare crisis plans, an airport criticality analysis and facilitating a challenging crisis simulation exercise with our management team alongside senior representatives from the major airport stakeholders.

The preparations and training facilitated by FastTrack were invaluable in preparing us to successfully respond to and recover from the challenging 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.”

— Chief Executive – International Airport

“I want to acknowledge your considerable enthusiasm, professionalism, and commitment to the Auckland International Airport Crash Exercise.

Auckland International Airport Ltd should be justifiably impressed with the way in which you quickly established their needs and worked with the diverse group of emergency services representatives to help deliver a complex full deployment exercise with great results.

On behalf of the Police as the lead of the joint agency writing and planning team, my sincere thanks for the fresh eyes you brought to our work and the very professional way you worked with us.

Kind regards.”

— Inspector, Operations Manager – NZ Police

“As the CEO of a leading New Zealand airline, I faced a major challenge when one of our aircraft crashed. It was one of the country’s worst crashes in aviation history and as CEO I had to respond to many issues including casualties, survivors, family, media and staff. Our response was widely regarded as outstanding, much of which can be attributed to having conducted a crisis simulation just prior to the event which enabled our management team to respond in a confident and professional manner.

It is with this experience that I am endorsing the FastTrack approach and their team’s ability to present realistic simulation exercises.”