In June 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued a set of revised guidelines on business continuity management (BCM) to emphasise the need for financial institutions (FIs) to maintain their business continuity and resilience against disruptive events such as IT outages, pandemic outbreaks, cyber-attacks, and physical threats.

1.  How Does the BCM Apply to Financial Institutions?

The BCM Guidelines contains a set of sound principles that FIs are encouraged to adopt, commensurate with the nature, size, risk profile and complexity of its business operations. FIs are responsible for establishing policies, plans and procedures to ensure that their critical business services and functions can be promptly resumed following a disruption.

The MAS also requires financial institutions to conduct an independent audit of their business continuity plans every three years, with the first audit due by June 6, 2024.

2. What is Expected of Financial Institutions?

Under the revised guidelines, FIs are expected to conduct the following activities:

  • Identify their critical business services;
  • Adopt a service-centric approach for the timely recovery of these critical services facing customers;
  • Establish a service recovery time, and mitigate concentration risks;
  • Enhance threat monitoring and environmental scanning;
  • Regularly test their BCM framework; and
  • Participate in industry and cross-sector exercises organized by government agencies and industry associations (if relevant).

3. How Can RSM Help?

  • RSM Technology Consulting team helps financial institutions and non financial institutions with the following:
  • Understanding the business risk through Business Impact Assessment;
  • Advising on the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO);
  • Solicit solutions to meet the RTO and RPO requirements; and
  • Testing & maintenance of the business continuity plan.

If you need help planning your Business Continuity Management (BCM), feel free to reach out to our specialists:

Hoi Wai Khin 
Partner & Deputy Industry Lead, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice
[email protected] 
Tel: +65 6594 7880                 

Kendrick Choo XH 
Manager, Technology Consulting
[email protected] 
Tel: +65 6594 7875