Singapore Law Blog

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today (10 January 2003) issued a consultation paper on proposed principles for Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and invites comment from financial sector participants and interested parties.

2. The proposed guidelines aim to encourage the adoption of sound BCP practices by financial institutions in Singapore to strengthen their resilience against widespread disruptions.

3. The financial sector is an interdependent global network of markets, systems and participants. This, together with the events of 11 September 2001, have highlighted vulnerabilities that may not have been fully appreciated before. This has led to heightened awareness of the importance of BCP generally and demand from the industry for further guidance and views on BCP practices.

4. The guidelines will help financial institutions raise their awareness and preparedness by having in place effective and comprehensive BCP. It comprises of seven principles:

• Board and management should take responsibility for the BCP preparedness of their institution.
• Institutions should embed BCP into their business-as-usual operations, incorporating sound BCP practices.
• Institutions should test their BCP regularly, completely and meaningfully.
• Institutions should develop recovery strategies and set recovery time objectives for critical business functions.
• Institutions should understand and appropriately mitigate interdependency risks of critical business functions.
• Institutions should plan for wide area (zonal) disruptions.
• Institutions should practice separation policy to mitigate concentration risk.

5. The consultation paper is posted on the MAS website, www.mas.gov.sg and comments should reach MAS by 10 Feb 2003. Please submit your comments to Industry BCP Officer, Specialist Risk Supervision department at bcp@mas.gov.sg.

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For the entire consultation paper, please go to our web site:

www.mas.gov.sg/regulations/download/BCP_Guidelines10Jan03.pdf