How to Convince Senior Management in a Bank that They Need Business Continuity Planning

Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning are both critically important to the survival of a bank. There are so many disastrous events that can happen in the world today. And, through no fault of your own, just one of these can cause the demise of your bank. These events can range from terrorism to weather to power failures to rogue employees to a chance accident. The event doesn’t even have to happen to your bank but could be simply related to yours. This includes things such as a gas leak in the same area or a disruption to your outgoing mail or couriers, a major weather systems that disrupts power a few states away or even a hostage taking in your city. These may be things beyond your control but they still can affect you in a serious way.

Your goals are the same: to be still in business when the event is over. This means that you have to know what to do before the event so that your bank and your people are prepared, what to do during the event to maximize the safety of the people and minimize damage, and what to do after the event to recover as quickly and efficiently as possible. Remember that the main goal is to still be in business because you knew enough to prepare in advance.

To do that, you will have to convince senior management that this is a good thing to do. To do that, you will need to learn why this is true and be able to answer the questions that will surely come about why we need to do this now.

Being prepared isn’t cheap but it is much more cost-effective that starting over from nothing. Building gone, people gone, money gone, clients gone.

This series of books is being written to explain what must be done in BCP. This book explains how you can present this topic to senior management in your bank. The purpose of this book is to tell you everything you need to know to present Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning to your senior management and to prepare you to be able to prepare the material and gather the facts to answer their questions. If they don’t ask you questions, then you’re either too good or you haven’t yet tweaked their interest. And, like most exercises involving management at any level, you only get one chance.

There will be two things that you will want to get agreement on from management. The first of these is to convince them that BCP/DRP is important to the bank and why. They will have all the normal objections about money and likelihood of occurrence for which we have provided you with answers. Most of your battle will be this job of convincing them to do it. The second task will be to get them to agree on the method of plan development that you recommend. This book will certainly help you with both of these tasks.