The COVID-19 pandemic has been transformative. It’s changed the way we live, and revolutionized the way we work, but its single most significant effect on the financial services industry might well lie in how much it’s contributed to an increased focus on operational resilience - a firm’s ability to withstand a shock, and maintain operational effectiveness in the face of a crisis. The Monticello team recently joined Risk.net’s most recent discussions on operational resilience, each of which explored a unique set of considerations and adopted a multifaceted approach towards the field.
The first discussion, Unlocking the potential of a firm-wide and systematic approach to operational resilience, focused both on firm-specific considerations and on industry-wide trends and changes. Throughout the discussion, panelists emphasized a top-down approach to operational resilience, stressing the importance of proactive, engaged C-suites (and citing the success of firms that enjoyed strong leadership during the early stages of the pandemic.) The discussion also revolved, in part, around regulation; an increasingly collaborative dynamic between corporate executives and regulators has carried tangible benefits for the financial industry as a whole, with regulators growing less prescriptive, and executives growing more comfortable with implementing and maintaining guidelines. We’d be remiss, of course, if we didn’t touch on technology, which—with the advent and adoption of work-from-home—is more important than it ever has been. Cyber-resilience is an excellent litmus test for an organization’s operational resilience as a whole, as evidenced by the (occasionally rocky) transition to a virtual working environment last year.
This brings us to the second discussion, Operational resilience: Driving excellence and effective measurement in financial services, which also opened with a discussion of cyber-resilience, and drove the point home with a fairly alarming statistic: the past year has seen a 900% increase in ransomware, largely due to the virtual environment we now work in. Operational resilience is must be looked at holistically. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to it or a complete checklist corporations can work their way through to create an airtight resilience plan. Rather, by focusing on developing and maintaining dedicated operational resilience groups, broadening the perspective beyond the firm and into the industry, and understanding customer needs and outcomes, firms can build better operational resilience, and inoculate themselves against the inevitable industry shocks to come.
We look forward to continuing to work with our clients to build their operational resilience in a fast-changing world.