In accordance with COBAC Regulation R-2008/01 requiring credit institutions to prepare a business continuity plan, in order to define and implement a plan of measures aimed at preventing or minimizing major losses and thus reduce the extent of residual risks to be covered in the business continuity plan, credit institutions identify their areas of weakness through audits and inspections.
For banks and credit institutions in Yaoundé that operate under COBAC and CEMAC rules, Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a structured process made up of seven recurring steps Initiation, Risk Assessment, Business Impact Analysis, Strategy Development, Plan Creation, Testing and Validation, and Maintenance. Together, these steps are designed to make sure that essential financial and technical operations can keep running even when major disruptions occur.
The 7 Methodological Phases
Phase 1: Program Initiation & Project Management
Objective: Obtain COBAC-compliant Board and Senior Management approval and establish the steering committee capable of piloting decisions to ensure internal control mechanism are efficient.
Action: Define the scope of the Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) policy in alignment with the Règlement COBAC R-2016/04 which governs internal controls for credit institutions in Cameroon and CEMAC.
Phase 2: Risk Assessment
Objective: Identify and evaluate potential threats and vulnerabilities in the system.
Action: Map physical and digital assets, evaluate localized Yaoundé infrastructure/utility disruptions, and align with the national financial system risk assessments.
Identify the activities that are essential to the survival of the credit institution or the proper functioning of the financial system;
Identify the threats to these activities that could cause them to be discontinued;
Assess the probability of occurrence and the potential impact of each risk (loss assessment scale, loss impact assessment grid, risk and loss typology);
Define the risk management strategy for each characterized risk;
Define the assumptions for the development of their business continuity plan, taking into account the scope of the loss scenarios.
Phase 3: Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Objective: Determine critical business functions and downtime impacts of the credit institution.
Action: Establish the Maximum Acceptable Outage (MAO), Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for critical operations.
The identification and classification of critical activities and functions as well as the risks that touch on each critical activity or function;
The validation of recovery or continuity objectives for each critical activity or function;
Determination of the processes and key resources related to the critical activities and functions to deduce the degraded modes of operation;
Identification of single points of failure and internal and external dependencies;
Assessing the impact of business interruption.
Phase 4: BCM Strategy Development
Objective: To determine recovery alternatives in cases of failure.
Action: To formulate recovery strategies for branches, ICT systems, and third-party vendors, ensuring backup processes to maintain standard service delivery in the interest of the security of the user/client and the credit institution.
Phase 5: Plan Development and Creation
Objective: To document actionable response, crisis management, and IT disaster recovery plans.
Action: You need to put together formal procedures for handling incidents, recovering business operations, and managing crises all in line with the requirements set out in COBAC Regulation R-2008/01.
Phase 6: Exercising, Testing, and Validation
Objective: To validate the effectiveness of the Business Continuity Plan.
Action: Perform routine disaster recovery and business continuity simulations, specifically testing IT system failovers and conducting emergency personnel evacuation drills, as required by COBAC Circulars.
Phase 7: Maintenance, Audit, and Culture
Objective: Keeping plans current to standards and compliant to regulation.
Action: Implement periodic internal audits, update the strategic framework in response to significant organizational shifts, and guarantee widespread employee training and compliance alignment across the entire branch network.