September 15, 2020

To have an effective Business Continuity Plan (BCP), recovery plans must be based on a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). According to the FFIEC’s Business Continuity Management booklet, BIA is “the process of identifying the potential impact of disruptive events to an entity’s functions and processes.” There are a lot of elements to capital BIA, but for the purpose of this article, we are going to focus on the conceptual lowercase business impact analysis. This analysis will help you make informed decisions about when certain processes can be restored and help you determine appropriate Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).

In times of substantial economic disruption, the natural tendency is to address short-term concerns and put off consideration of longer-term strategy until the disruption passes, and the picture becomes more apparent. Delaying consideration of strategic direction in this fashion forgoes timely consideration of strategic opportunities and evaluation of risks presented by the disruption. Examining your strategic direction is one of the most important measures you can take in times of change and uncertainty.

It is the age-old question: Buy vs. Build? How do you know which is the best strategy for your institution? As a former banker who has made the recent transition to a SaaS company executive, my answer today differs significantly from the one I would have provided five years ago. Today, I have a deeper understanding of the benefits, challenges, roadblocks and costs associated with building a data analytics solution. If data analytics is on your strategic roadmap, perhaps the insights shared here will aid you in making this significant decision for your institution.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a significant number of fraud-related concerns, but perhaps most disturbing is the potential for increases in synthetic identity fraud, which is estimated to cost $6 billion in annual credit losses in the United States.

As the calendar turns to the fall, millions of Americans gear up for their favorite sport of football. Of course, with this being a year unlike any other, we’re still trying to figure out what it will look like. Nonetheless, what better way to usher in the new football season than to relate standard gridiron phraseology to its investment portfolio equivalent? Some of this may sound like a stretch for the sticks, but perhaps you can find a loose ball in the pileup. If so, hopefully, you can convert the takeaway into a visit to the sweet land of six.

It must surely be the most overused sentence in the English language. And never in the last 100 years has it meant so much to so many people, in our own neighborhoods and across the globe.

I think all of us can agree that 2020 needs to go away. Of course, we can’t snap our fingers and make it happen, and even if we could, the effects will linger.