Third party service providers are becoming an ever more critical element of business continuity planning capabilities in many institutions.

The results of a survey of BCP in financial services have been unveiled by CityIQ, who undertook the research this summer. It reveals the following: Reliance on third party providers is increasing; Remote systems access is becoming an integral part of BCP strategies; Budgets are improving; Spending on IT related recovery and resilience is increasing; Spending on workspace recovery facilities is expected to fall; Levels of testing have increased, but there are still gaps for some organisations; Supplier Management is an ”area for improvement” for smaller companies.

Paul Wiltshire, managing director at CityIQ, comments: “It’s clear from our research that supplier management is an area where services could be improved and costs reduced by adopting a more robust approach. Working from home is now an important part of many organisations’ business continuity strategy, meaning more resources are being put into remote access and remote systems working. As a consequence, investment in workplace recovery is in decline.”

He adds: “Also identified in the results was the presence of “testing gaps”, with a persistent minority believing that live-use is an adequate method of testing key technologies such as remote systems access and internet/cloud computing. However, we still see spending and testing as two areas that have improved since our last survey and we predict they will continue to do so.”

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