By Sam | August 23, 2018

Hurricane Preparedness: Is Your Credit Union Ready?

Many threats face credit unions, but the forces of nature represent a growing yearly risk. How can you prepare for a hurricane? And how can you test your plans to make sure your preparations are sound?

There are three major areas that we recommend shoring up in the case of natural disasters, and more specifically, for major storms. They’ll take only little bit of your time in daily operation, but what’s one stitch in time, if it saves nine later? Remember that in emergencies, it’s far more efficient to act than it is to react.

https://vimeo.com/282606290

Foremost, we advise ensuring that you can communicate directly with your entire staff. When calamity strikes, you’ll want to know that you can reach everyone. The easiest way to do this is by maintaining accurate, up-to-date records of phone numbers and contact information. Keeping your employees abreast of what’s happening will pay dividends in the recovery stages of a disaster.

The second thing we urge credit unions to do is to prepare their IT systems. When you back up your systems and data, test their validity. It’s not outlandish to store backups off-site, either; decentralized data is more secure against hurricanes and storms that may threaten the very infrastructure of your branch. Furthermore, keeping an off-site backup handy will allow you to recover your data if you’re forced to relocate during recovery.

Finally, take a look at your facility needs. If you are forced to recover outside of your branch in the event of a hurricane or large storm, it’s extremely helpful to keep a complete list of your facility needs. (If you have a strong business continuity plan, you may already have such a list. If you don’t already have one, you may want to build one into your plan.) With a comprehensive list of needs, you’ll be able to quickly and efficiently gather items to reestablish in a new location. Additionally, you may want to identify alternate facility locations, so that setting up shop in a new place takes minimal effort.

To briefly sum up our three tips for hurricane preparedness, we advocate: 

1. Maintain accurate, up-to-date phone numbers and contact information of your employees.
2. Back up your systems, make sure the backups are valid, and consider storing some backups off-site.
3. Keep a complete list of facility needs so that you can quickly set up shop in a new location. 

Regardless of measurement systems or exact conversion rates, an ounce of prevention is still roughly equivalent to a pound of cure. Following these loose protocols will safeguard you and your branch against some of the risks presented by hurricanes. Storms and other forces of nature are unpredictable and destructive, but with a little planning, testing, and tweaking, you can mitigate many of the most common setbacks. Hurricane and disaster recovery will be smoother and faster if you keep these tips in mind.