The Official Assura Blog
Sunday, November 18, 2007
How not to handle a crisis that affects your business...
Hat tip to Breitbart.tv: From Santa Cruz, CA comes this report of a restaurant that is shut down because of a communicable disease that seems to have made around 80 people sick thus far.
Watch the YouTube clip for the story.
There are a couple of things wrong with the handling of this incident:
Watch the YouTube clip for the story.
There are a couple of things wrong with the handling of this incident:
- The Santa Cruz County Health Department isn't releasing the name of the restaurant. It's tough to contain an outbreak without facts.
- The restaurant in question is refusing to respond to the media. This is the wrong approach because the media have already started to write the story. They will do this with or without the restaurant. The right thing for the restaurant to do is to respond with some key messages about how they are handling the situation. Now the story is out of their control, and now the public perception is that they are being evasive.
The media have a saying: "feed the monster". Every single day, the media have to fill up so much time or so many column inches of space. Make no mistake about it, they will write the story with or without a response from this restaurant.
It will be interesting to see how this restaurant's future plays out. As a colleague of ours always says, "no comment is never an option".
Labels: Crisis Management
Monday, November 5, 2007
BASEL II Adopted by Federal Reserve For Financial Industry
On Thursday, November 1, the Federal Reserve in conjunction with the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) adopted BASEL II for large financial institutions in the US that have international activity. This adopted framework replaces BASEL I. It should be noted, that BASEL II has implications on how risk management for larger financial institution is handled. For institutions to fit this standard they must have at least $250 billion in total assets or at least $10 billion in foreign exposure.
The benefits of BASEL II is that it is a common framework that is already implemented in Europe with a proven methodology that can be leveraged. With regards to business continuity, the big difference between BASEL II and FFIEC is that BASEL II does have a requirement for implementing cross-border communications. Cross Border Communications is simply communication procedures for financial authorities in other jurisdictions. However, many Crisis Management plans for financial institutions have these procedures already in place.
To read the final rule, go to http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20071102a1.pdf
Overall, the adoption of BASEL II does not affect many of the financial institutions in the United States with regards to business continuity. For those financial institutions that do fall under BASEL II, there should be not significant impact if the program is fully compliant with the FFIEC Business Continuity requirements.
The benefits of BASEL II is that it is a common framework that is already implemented in Europe with a proven methodology that can be leveraged. With regards to business continuity, the big difference between BASEL II and FFIEC is that BASEL II does have a requirement for implementing cross-border communications. Cross Border Communications is simply communication procedures for financial authorities in other jurisdictions. However, many Crisis Management plans for financial institutions have these procedures already in place.
To read the final rule, go to http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20071102a1.pdf
Overall, the adoption of BASEL II does not affect many of the financial institutions in the United States with regards to business continuity. For those financial institutions that do fall under BASEL II, there should be not significant impact if the program is fully compliant with the FFIEC Business Continuity requirements.
Labels: Banking and Finance, Regulatory