Business Continuity Guidance

Business interruption, regardless of the cause, can be very damaging for insurance companies. Statistics indicate that companies who suffer from business interruption without a business continuity plan in place lose large sums or do not recover at all. Before it's too late, let us lead you through a proven action plan to mitigate your risks of business interruption along with financial liquidity problems, increased operating costs, and erosion of competitive market share that result.

Problem Statement – Insurance company executives understand that their customers perceive the service they are provided with is as important as the company's products. They also recognize that even a small business interruption could have a substantial impact on the customer without an orderly approach to business continuity and disaster recovery process in place. If not promptly addressed, unplanned interruptions from disasters or crisis events can destroy an otherwise successful operation. The level of exposure and vulnerability has become widely recognized since 9/11 for the entire business community, and insurance companies are no exception.

• Assets at Risk: People (employees, key managers, business partners and advocates, the public); Physical Property; Operations (supply and distribution channels including utilities, key vendors, key contracts); Information (records, data, media, systems, telecommunications); Intellectual Property; Financial Resources (cash flow, financial instruments, investments, analyst's ratings, credit lines, stock price, adverse forecasts) all have to be considered in the plan.
• The “One Size Fits All” Approach is a mistake: The needs of every insurance company are unique. Recently, the business continuity solution provider market experienced a huge escalation in demand and as a result the big providers offered comprehensive packages. This approach does not meet the needs of all companies. These packages are extremely expensive and often contain unnecessary 'bells and whistles' … making it more difficult or impossible to recover from a problem.

The creation and maintenance of a sound business continuity and disaster recovery plan is a fairly complicated undertaking that warrants a proven methodology.

The Right Approach - The primary objectives of a Business Continuity Plan is to mitigate risk for the organization, and to sustain and preserve business value. Following an interruption, the organization must re-establish business operations as quickly as possible. Therefore, the goals of the Business Continuity Plan must include:

• Identifying weaknesses and implementing a risk mitigation program.
• Minimizing the duration of a serious disruption to business operations.
• Facilitating effective co-ordination of recovery tasks.
• Reducing the complexity of the recovery effort.

Info724's Business Continuity Offering
Info724 provides a short-term service at an affordable price to fulfill the needs of any company. The deliverables include:

• Custom high level needs analysis and planning for business continuity.
• A baseline set of requirements with best practices in support of a Request for Proposal process.
• A step-by-step guide map to managing the Business Continuity Planning process.
• A framework for making management decisions based on priorities.