RIAs must prepare for post-disaster recovery or regulators will lower the boom

Did I forget to mention earthquakes in cities where you wouldn’t expect them to occur? Hopefully, RIAs in those cities weren’t impacted.

I appreciate the sense of humor that goes along with the sense of caring, and common sense.

Brooke

The article timing is appropriate, as September marks National Preparedness Month.

Here’s what advisors might consider: On Monday morning, shut off the circuit breakers to your office and lock the doors.

Can essential business functions be restored by the end of the day? Think of how one would manage trading or withdrawal requests from clients. What about contacting clients and employees? Where is their latest contact information stored? Hopefully not on a server or workstation that doesn’t have any power.

Great advice Bill. It is one thing to have a plan, but it must be tested and updated to be ready for when it is needed.

Mike Byrnes, President
Byrnes Consulting, LLC
http://byrnesconsulting.com/
http://twitter.com/ByrnesConsultin

Suggestion:

To “stress test” your firm’s disaster recovery and resiliency plan:

Call everyone on a random weekday morning well before they leave the house and tell them no to come in the office and:

1) Work from home

2) tell 50% of them they are not to work at all

3) tell 80% of them they are not to work at all

There are three simple scenarios that will certainly test your mettle.

I would also state that any firm should invest in a fully replicated virtual office that can be spun up at a moment’s notice. This simple life insurance policy for your operations could save your business especially when a large regional disaster strikes. Remember when Katrina took out electricity for millions and many telco facilities were under water, just driving down the street to the local SBUX wasn’t going to put you back on line.

Creating a truly resilient virtual office requires time and resources to get it in place but it could provided enormous ROI in the event of a disaster. Additionally such and environment can be quickly replicated or converted to an expansion or auxiliary office facility. At a cost of about $250-500 per month depending on the level of services and storage requirements, it is a service that provides peace of mind and on-demand expansion capability.

Kind regards,

Peter Giza
Managing Partner
Spitbrook LLC

Another very constructive comment. Thank you.

Brooke

Brooke,

And again I thank you.

Pete

Pete Giza
Managing Partner
Spitbrook LLC