Business Continuity and Scenario Planning

Registration Process: 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM

Session Start Time: 9:00 AM

• What is Business Continuity? – How Business Continuity evolved; What are the differences with regular risk management
• Why is Business Continuity Critical? We examine potential “headaches” such as telecommunications failures and the potential for disruptions caused by environmental failures.
• Basic Definitions – We explore some basic definitions such as Business Continuity Management, Business Impact Analysis, Critical Market Participants, Major Operational Disruption, Operational Risk, Recovery Time and Resilience among others.
• Risks & Threats – Understanding risk, what are the real treats and interdependencies are only a few of the many issues coved in this session.
• The Basel Principles for Business Continuity - We explore the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s set of high-level principles intended to support international standard setting organizations and national financial authorities in their efforts to improve the resilience of financial systems to major operational disruptions.
• Effective Business Continuity Management - We explore the details of a range of activities aimed at identifying, controlling, and mitigating risks. Included in this section are issues such as;
• Risk Management & BCP
• Types of Contingency Related Plans
• Key Differences Between BCP & DRP
• Interrelationship of Contingency Related Plans
• Risk Monitoring, Business Impact Analyses
• Recovery Strategies
• Business Continuity Plans
• Diversification of Back-Up Arrangements
• Testing Program
• Training and Awareness Programs
• Communication and Crisis management Programs
• Recovery Times
• What are the Costs? A possible barrier to the adoption of comprehensive Business Continuity is that it is seen as a sunk cost and as being of no immediate benefit to the bottom line
• What are the Costs?
• Balancing costs against recovery times
• Recovery Point & Recovery Time
• Recovery Cost Balancing
• Cost of Alternative Sites
• “Crossing Bank Borders” – IT Contingencies - In this section we look at the key IT threats, the nature of and the relationship between the “internal” and “external” IT environments.
• IT Service Continuity Management
• IT Threats
• IT Service Contingency Strategy
• Maintaining an IT Service Continuity Strategy
• Business Criticality & Risk Assessments
• The Risk Assessment Process
• The IT Contingency Planning Process
• Developing an IT Service Contingency Strategy including mapping process flows
• Mapping the risks
• Rehearsals
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous trade-off and architectures
• Impact of Disaster – The Threat Radius.
• Case Study – “How far is far enough?” – Business Continuity and 9/11.

• The Human Aspect - Building resiliency into your human capital. We examine the nature of human capital, human capital risks in crisis situations, and critical factors in the human chain.
• Human Capital Risks,
• Ability to Attend Work,
• Ability to Deliver Critical Internal Services,
• Ability to Maintain Business Operations.
• Critical Factors in the Human Chain.
• Business Continuity Pitfalls – Issues that must be avoided in the BCP process to ensure success.
• The 10 commandments of business continuity management.
• Key Issues in Business Continuity Planning in an IT Environment – How do you determine the quality and effectiveness of the organization’s business continuity planning process, and whether the continuity testing program is sufficient to demonstrate the financial institution’s ability to meet its continuity objectives? We review key issues such as;
• Business Impact Analysis & Risk Assessment,
• Risk Management,
• Hardware, Back-up & Recovery Issues,
• Security,
• Outsourced Activities,
• Risk Monitoring & Testing,
• Execution, Evaluation, & Re-testing.
• Case Studies – Major events and their effect on financial institutions
• Natural Disaster – Hurricane Katrina
• Terrorism – London July 7th
• Terrorism – 9/11 & Disruptions to the Payment System.
• In each case study we look at the event, the impact to the financial system, specific problems and lessons learned.
• 2011 Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami & Nuclear Power Plant Failure
• What the events in Japan teach us about Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
• Successes
• Failures
• A Scenario Planning Primer – What it is, developing effective scenarios and linking scenarios to analysis.
• Using Scenarios for Business Continuity Planning.
• Scenario planning – the process. How to do it. Hands on exercise

Stanley Epstein has had extensive experience in banking and IT specifically the operations, payments, RTGS and the operational risk aspects of banking in the UK, Europe, the USA, Australia and Southern Africa. His bank-operations, payments systems, operational risk and clearing house experience is wide ranging and includes working closely with organisations such as UNCITRAL, Deutsche Bank and CHIPS in New York; APACS, British Bankers Association, CLS and Barclays Bank in London; Crédit Agricole in France; UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, the central bank in the Netherlands; Alpha Bank in Greece; the central bank in Romania; the central bank in Kazakhstan; Bank Leumi and the central bank in Israel; the Standard Bank, Clearing Bankers Association; Bankserv and the central bank in South Africa and ANZ and Commonwealth Bank in Australia.

Commencing his career at the Standard Bank of South Africa he gained a thorough grounding in all aspects of banking ranging from the bank’s branch system, back-office payments processing. He was also closely involved in the development of electronic banking at the Standard Bank. At a banking industry level he was involved in the creation and development of STRATE (Central Securities Depository in South Africa dealing with the dematerialization, clearing and settlement of all financial instruments in that country. He also served as Vice Chairman of the South African Clearing Bankers Association’s ERAG Group (an interbank payments/operations risk initiative established to identify & eliminate operational, legal and other risks in electronic payments) and later as Chairman of the Payments Association of South Africa Operational Risk Committee. On leaving South Africa he joined Fundtech Corporation, a leading provider of financial technology based in the US.

Stanley has a Master’s degree in Economics which he earned with a dissertation on Financial Innovation and a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting.