Continuity Planning for Financial Institutions

Introduction

Banks, insurers, payment providers and investment firms operate services that customers and markets depend on every minute of the day. Regulators around the world now expect financial institutions to demonstrate operational resilience: to identify important business services, set impact tolerances and prove that they can stay within them during severe but plausible disruptions.

This Continuity Planning for Financial Institutions training course explains how to build continuity and operational resilience capability that meets these expectations. Participants learn how to identify important business services, map their resources, set impact tolerances, conduct scenario testing, manage third-party and technology dependencies, and coordinate crisis response and regulatory communication.

The course is grounded in the specific risks of financial services, including payment system outages, cyber attacks, market disruption and failures of critical outsourced providers.

Course Objectives

By the end of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Explain regulatory expectations for continuity and operational resilience in financial services
• Identify important business services and their customers
• Map people, processes, technology, facilities and third parties supporting each service
• Set impact tolerances and recovery objectives
• Design and run severe but plausible scenario tests
• Manage technology, cyber and outsourcing resilience
• Coordinate crisis response and regulatory communication
• Report resilience to boards and regulators

Target Audience

This training course is suitable for a wide range of professionals, including:

• Business continuity and operational resilience managers in financial institutions
• Operational risk professionals
• IT disaster recovery and technology resilience managers
• Compliance and regulatory affairs professionals
• Internal auditors in financial services
• Heads of operations and payments

Training Methodology

The course combines regulatory briefings with practical workshops using financial services case studies. Participants identify important business services, build service maps, set impact tolerances and design scenario tests. A simulated payment system disruption tests crisis coordination and regulatory engagement.

Target Competencies

• Operational resilience framework design
• Important business service identification
• Service mapping
• Impact tolerance setting
• Scenario testing
• Regulatory resilience reporting

Day One: Resilience in Financial Services

• Why financial institutions face heightened resilience expectations
• From business continuity to operational resilience
• Overview of international regulatory approaches
• Systemic risk and the wider financial ecosystem
• Lessons from major financial service outages
• Governance and board accountability for resilience
• Self-assessment of your institution's resilience maturity

Day Two: Important Services and Impact Tolerances

• Identifying important business services from the customer view
• Criteria for importance: customers, markets and safety
• Setting impact tolerances and maximum tolerable disruption
• Linking impact tolerances with recovery time objectives
• Documenting service definitions and rationale
• Board approval of services and tolerances
• Workshop: identifying services and setting tolerances

Day Three: Mapping and Vulnerabilities

• Mapping people, processes and technology for each service
• Facilities, data and third-party dependencies
• Identifying vulnerabilities and concentration risks
• Critical outsourcing and cloud service dependencies
• Tools and repositories for service mapping
• Prioritising remediation and resilience investment
• Exercise: building a service map

Day Four: Scenario Testing and Technology Resilience

• Designing severe but plausible disruption scenarios
• Testing ability to remain within impact tolerances
• Cyber attack and data corruption scenarios
• Technology recovery and data restoration testing
• Third-party failure and exit scenarios
• Documenting test results and remediation
• Workshop: designing a scenario test

Day Five: Crisis Response and Regulatory Reporting

• Crisis management for financial service disruptions
• Customer communication and protecting vulnerable customers
• Regulatory notification and engagement during incidents
• Self-assessment documentation for regulators
• Board reporting and continuous improvement
• Simulation: a major payment system disruption
• Personal action plan for financial services resilience