London, 6th January 2020: Fortress Availability Services today published a report which focuses on the top 5 key trends that will be seen in business continuity and operational resilience in 2020 and beyond.

The report, which aims to highlight these key trends, also focuses on the Bank of England’s discussion paper entitled “Building the UK Financial Sector’s Operational Resilience”. This was published in conjunction with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) advocated that Operational Resilience underpins Financial Resilience. It is from this report that the 5 key trends were determined by Fortress.

This, and its recommendations on processes, policy and allocating responsibility, raised the focus on Operational Resilience to the same level that had previously been placed on Financial Resilience in the preceding decade.

The trends that are focused on in the report are:

• DP118, a new way to look at Operational Resilience
• In today’s connected world, customers will judge a business’s values by how it communicates during a disaster or crisis
• After the distractions and uncertainty of 2019, along with the reviews of high-level business services as a response to the BoE discussion paper, 2020 will be a year of action
• 2020 will be a year to test new processes in the light of these reviews
• Banks and financial institutions will need to be more cyber resilient to protect their businesses from risk

The report also found that as the nature of risk has evolved over time, Operational Resilience has taken on greater significance for the regulators. The openness and complexity of the financial ecosystem and the likelihood that breakdowns will happen means that firms must do more than monitor and mitigate risks, they must also focus on building resilience to ensure that they can continue to deliver Business Services when an incident occurs. The Bank of England also advises that plans are put in place on the basis that these incidents will occur, rather than might occur.

Andrew Lawton, CEO of Fortress Availability Services, said: “The world is rapidly changing with digitalisation, regulation and shifting customer needs requiring a new regime for Operational Risk and Resiliency programmes. Change brings huge opportunities, but also unintended consequences.

These include risk in the change process itself, opportunities for cybercrime, and a rising interconnectedness which means incidents can propagate right across the industry similar to the effect of NotPetya .

The industry and the regulators interests are aligned in this area, but the regulators will drive the action in 2020.”

To Find Out More

Download our FREE report “The Definitive 2020 Predictions Guide for Operational Resilience” via https://fortressas.com/2020-trends-guide/.