Joint Forum issues consultation paper on high-level business continuity principles

The Joint Forum today released for consultation a paper entitled High-level principles for business continuity which was developed in response to a request from the Financial Stability Forum. The objective of this initiative is to support international standard setting organisations and national authorities in their efforts to improve the resilience of financial systems to major operational disruptions.

The paper promotes a common base level of resilience across national boundaries by establishing a consistent context for the development of business continuity arrangements. It provides authorities with a broad framework for developing business continuity arrangements that are more closely tailored to their unique sectoral and local circumstances. The high-level principles in this paper are directed at both financial industry participants and financial authorities globally.

The Chairman of the Joint Forum, Ian Johnston, said today, “Many organisations active in the financial services industry already have in place effective approaches to business continuity management. I believe this paper takes business continuity a step further, making a valuable contribution to systemic resilience by establishing a common global framework for approaching key business continuity issues and highlighting concepts that are relatively new in this area. One aspect of the paper that I think organisations will find particularly helpful is the manner in which the principles are driven home by linking them explicitly to the lessons learned from actual operational disruptions.”

He continued, “I am pleased to release these high-level cross-sectoral principles and would encourage financial industry participants and financial authorities alike to provide comments during the consultation period.” Ian Johnston is a member of the senior management of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission.

The Joint Forum was established in 1996 under the aegis of the BCBS, IOSCO, and the IAIS to deal with issues common to the banking, securities and insurance sectors, including the supervision of financial conglomerates.

The paper is available on the websites of the Bank for International Settlements ( http://www.bis.org), IOSCO ( http://www.iosco.org) and the IAIS ( http://www.iaisweb.org). Comments are invited and should be forwarded by e-mail to the Joint Forum Secretariat at baselcommittee@bis.org by 10 March 2006.