All organizations need to consider business continuity, and Grow Financial is no different. We have an Incident Management team of cross-functional professionals who work together to ensure our organization is well-prepared for a wide variety of unplanned situations, from cyberattacks to weather emergencies. It’s important to us that we prioritize risk management as we keep your money and personal information safe. Here are four primary things we do to prepare:

Maintain a business continuity plan.

It’s key for every business, no matter the size, to have a business continuity plan in place. This important document serves as a guide to keeping your essential business functions operational during unplanned emergencies. Our Incident Management team continually evaluates our emergency preparedness, and we regularly review our business continuity plan to ensure it’s as current as possible and comprehensive for a wide variety of scenarios that could occur. Additionally, we test the plan to identify any gaps and fortify our processes going forward. Learn more about setting up a business continuity plan for your organization.

Monitor and evaluate our performance.

Essential to identifying anomalies, such as instances of fraud, is a robust understanding of what constitutes normal business operations. As part of our risk management strategy, we review a wide array of data in the daily course of business which makes it possible to identify when something’s not right. When a situation does occur, we investigate it thoroughly to minimize any impact on our members.

Prepare our infrastructure and leverage technology.

Physical security and cybersecurity are both critical areas for all financial institutions. As technology continues to advance, we make sure to stay on the cutting edge of best practices and systems. Sometimes that means updating what we currently have in place, and sometimes it means upgrading or replacing infrastructure and introducing a new layer or protocol. As part of our business continuity plan, we consider the potential impact of reduced access to electricity, internet and other technology essentials and determine processes and procedures to help us return to full operational capacity as quickly as possible.

Stay updated about new risks.

Maintaining an ongoing awareness of industry trends is one important way we safeguard your money and personal information. From regularly reviewing FBI alerts to communicating with other credit unions in the NCUA, we make sure to flag opportunities for potential fraud and inform our members about ways to stay safe. Additionally, we assess risk regularly, whether that be risk to credit, liquidity, strategy, compliance or many other areas that financial institutions must monitor and make decisions about.

Risk management is an ongoing process as internal and external threats evolve and become more sophisticated. While there is a certain level of uncertainty inevitable in emergency situations, we’ve taken steps to minimize the risk to our organization and to our members and ensure business continuity during unforseen events.

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