Following July 7 London terrorist attacks Homeloan Management Limited (HML), took the opportunity to review its business continuity planning procedures.
Steve Haggerty, HML’s managing director commented: “We already had a robust recovery plan in place, but there’s no room for complacency in this crucial area. We service the mortgage books of over 30 different lenders based throughout the UK and now in Ireland, and our operations are business- critical to our clients and to their customers. It’s essential for us to have sound contingency procedures to facilitate a rapid resumption of all key functions should we be affected by any incident. We’re pretty confident over our plan: indeed, early last year, HML won the award for Most Effective Business Continuity Plan from Financial Services Technology magazine.”
Ever since the company was formed at the end of the 1980s, HML has had a working business continuity plan, which has been steadily improved over time. Following the events of 11 September 2001, HML further strengthened and redesigned its plan.
Steve Haggerty explained: “We undertook a complete business impact analysis across our various business functions and the systems and facilities used to support their operations. This enabled us to establish recovery priorities and procedures based on business impact. We have carefully designed and well communicated plans, so that we all know how to react should we be affected by an incident. Staff receive regular training and updates on business continuity planning, via the company’s intranet, workshops and also during the starter induction course for new staff.”
When HML opened its new office in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in early 2004, business continuity procedures were incorporated from the outset into the state-of-the-art facility.
Andrew Duff, the company’s director of Irish operations said: “Our presence here in Derry gives HML added strength in terms of disaster recovery as we are located across the Irish Sea from the company’s other units, over 100 miles from the Glasgow office and twice that distance from Padiham and Skipton. That gives the whole company strength in geographic spread.”
Continues Steve Haggerty: “Because HML operates out of four different sites, Skipton, Glasgow, Padiham and Londonderry, we can transfer operations from one location to another very rapidly. As additional back-up, we also have contingency arrangements with Sungard Availability Services who can provide an alternative site or a mobile site facility. HML can also offer a full business continuity plan to any lender that needs a back-up solution to their own in-house mortgage processing operation.”
“We test our recovery plan regularly and try to learn from the experience,” he continued. “However, I don’t take an ‘I’m alright, Jack’ attitude. I’d strongly advocate that other service businesses, large or small, should check their disaster recovery programmes or, if they don’t already have one in place, start by making some basic plans.”
“It doesn’t take a terrorist incident directly affecting a company or its staff to interrupt normal business: a major fire in the locality, a gas leak, or the area being cordoned off by police in a security raid could all prevent access to premises and necessitate a transfer of business functions. In addition to regular testing, on several occasions HML has invoked parts of its business continuity plans, for example when we suffered a local power failure or a major loss of IT connectivity.”
Haggerty concluded: “Each company needs to look at its processes and procedures. At HML, we’ve done all we can to make sure that if disaster strikes, it means ‘business as usual’.”
