By Sam | June 10, 2013

Free Sample! – How To Use A Credit Union Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Credit unions are unique in that collaboration, not competition, drives their relationships with their peers. Sharing best practices and lessons learned allows Credit Unions to meet strategic goals while mitigating the risk of new product or service implementations. As a leader, you may have reached out to your peers or even to a provider like Ongoing Operations for a credit union disaster recovery plan template or sample. And while this is a great way to get started, we encourage our clients to follow a few basic steps to ensure the plan fits their unique needs:

Step 1: Carefully review the plans assumptions and goals

Each Credit Union has a unique make-up consisting of key items such as: field of membership, asset size, and even your product/services. While credit unions may be fundamentally the same, each has characteristics to serve its specific membership needs. For instance – a Credit Union in a historically high risk hurricane zone may choose to simply switch to their DR provider early, move things off the first floor, and direct members to their online services prior to an event. A similar Credit Union with a lower hurricane risk may develop strategy that that is more of a wait/see approach.

Step 2: Recognize the key components of the template that must be updated with your specific data prior to it being distributed

Employee and vendor lists are critical components of any DR plan and should always be updated quarterly at a minimum. Other areas often cited in a template but not filled in are: alternate locations, succession data, and authorization to declare names/positions. These may appear obvious and my intent is not to insult anyone but more often than not as a planner, I run into just these kinds of issues when consulting on new plans.

Step 3: Add Incident Management and Crisis Communications Plans

Very few templates provide you with these important pieces of your DR/BCP. We’ve written several blogs on their importance and encourage you to develop them according to your specific Credit Union disaster recovery requirements. These two plans are the “action” plans for your use during a crisis. A template will never be a substitute for your leadership’s team expertise in this area.  A good overview of all the components of a complete business continuity plan can be found here.

Related Content:

Top 5 Disaster Recovery Testing Issues

How Often Should I test my Disaster Recovery Plan?

Disaster Test Scenarios for Credit Unions

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