The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority defines an operationally resilient firm as one that should be able to prevent disruption to the lowest practical extent. That is, they are able to adapt their systems and processes to maintain the running of their services in the event of an incident, return to normal running as soon as the disruption is over, and prevent a similar incident from having the same impact in the future.
In other words, we want our financial sector to be able to absorb shocks rather than contribute to them, a reputation it has gained over the course of history. Regulation of the sector is heading more and more in this direction and organisations are increasingly judged on how they deal with unforeseen shocks than anything else.
At the speed with which we all operate in the digital age, customers expect around-the-clock service, and they expect any disruption to be solved within minutes, worst case scenario hours. That sets the bar incredibly high and defines a crucial area of investment for financial institutions today and in the future.
The underlying characteristic essential to success will be visibility. How much visibility do you have across your operational estate? How quickly can you react when an incident occurs? How quickly can you recover services? And for the most resilient organisations, can you be proactive in predicting incidents?
For the vast majority, the reality is still operational siloes and disparate service delivery. It’s unsustainable and potentially catastrophic for the organisation’s operations and reputation. Consolidating, simplifying, and standardising services will be a key driver for digital transformation in the financial services sector. What if you could bring your data architecture onto a single platform? How would this improve visibility and, with it, operational resilience?
Let’s talk about what we have seen.
The key challenges affecting operational resilience are the ability for organisations to engage with their customers and the ability to provide real-time insights to regulators. As you can see, it’s all about visibility.
To address this, the focus for the majority of organisations has been in three distinct areas: Risk Management, Change Management and Customer Service.
At Crossfuze we work with businesses to consolidate their services onto a single platform of action. This empowers the entire organisation with consistent and reliable data that updates in real-time. This allows leadership to make informed decisions that they can be confident in. In particular, leaders can respond to risk exposure in real-time.
This level of visibility creates a near bulletproof operational resilience framework that ensures regulatory compliance. But the benefits extend beyond that. The confidence enhanced visibility provides allows for effortless change management while minimising the risk of outages. This enables the business to operate with significantly more agility, driving innovation across previously siloed business units.
The end result? What all businesses want – better outcomes for their customers. Reliable customer data and agile operations allow you to provide a tailored, personalised service.
At Crossfuze we appreciate that operational resilience is rising higher and higher up the agenda for financial services organisations. If you are interested in discussing your operational resilience plans and how your digital transformation programme feeds into this, please reach out to us at letstalk@crossfuze.com or to me personally at oliver.nowak@crossfuze.com.