Continuum Insurance Brokers

BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING

The attacks on 9/11, the Buncefield fire and the Manchester bombing in 1996 are all examples of extreme disasters that created major long terms difficulties for the businesses directly and indirectly affected by them. But disasters do not have to be on the scale of cataclysmic events such as these to have a serious detrimental effect on the business. When you consider the dependency of your business on your IT system and what would happen if you lost all of your data because the backups failed you can get some idea of how small events can have a disproportionate impact on your business.

Consider the statistics

20% of all companies will suffer fire, theft flood or storm damage, power failures, terrorism or hardware/software disaster. Of those without a business continuity plan:

43% will never re-open
80% fail within 13 months
53% of claimants never recoup the losses incurred by a disaster

Source: Aveco

Less than 50% of all organisations have a business continuity plan
43% of companies that do have a business continuity plan do not test it annually
80% of companies have not developed any crisis management to provide IT coverage sufficient to keep the business functioning effectively
40% of companies that do have crisis management plans do not have a team dedicated to disaster recoverys

Source: London Chamber of Commerce

It need not necessarily be damage to your property that causes you problems. Dependency on a single supplier or customer that suffers a disaster may have a knock-on effect on your business.

We often talk to clients who understand the need for a Business Continuity Plan but other more pressing issues take priority. We have the tools to help you put together your own plan and would strongly urge you to consider taking that first step.