Who?
Our client is the UK division of a leading global general insurer with millions of customers worldwide. They’re part of a group that’s a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, serving 105 million clients in 61 countries.
The challenge
Following the disruption caused by COVID-19, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) jointly released a policy in March 2021 outlining proposed changes to how firms approach their operational resilience. The policy focused on:
- Identifying important business services (“IBSs”)
- Setting impact tolerances for maximum tolerable disruption
- Testing
- Mapping
- Communications plans
- Conducting ‘lessons learned’ exercises and self-assessments to a level of sophistication necessary.
A deadline of March 2022 was set for completing these initial actions, with firms then having to address any vulnerabilities in their operational resilience and achieve full implementation by 31 March 2025. For firms in scope, like our client, all this required, and will continue to require, a significant amount of time and resource to be invested.
How we helped
Working in partnership, we performed a review of policy documentation and conducted interviews with key identified stakeholders to assess where the firm was against the new requirements. A range of departments and individuals were consulted, including those with responsibility for operational resilience, change management, cyber security, and physical security. This informed our recommendations on how to transition our client’s operational resilience activity, cultures, and behaviours into BAU.
We then used our Operational Resilience Maturity Assessment (ORMA) tool to assess the firm against each specific focus area and create a plan to build resilience that went beyond the minimum standard of compliance within the regulations.
Outcomes
Both our initial assessment and our ORMA tool have measured the insurer’s operational resilience capability and provided recommendations to strengthen it to meet the FCA/PRA regulation:
Identified a lack of resource in key areas around operational resilience and physical security, with an independent view presented to senior management and stakeholders to act upon
Provided the platform to discuss the importance of operational resilience, and to align all departments on their responsibilities in this area
Highlighted the progress the firm has already made towards the March 2025 deadline and provided focused feedback and recommendations against the core regulatory areas
Find out more about what we’ve achieved for other clients in Financial Services.
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