MAS Beefs up Guidelines to Strengthen Banks Against Service Disruptions
by Fintech News Singapore June 7, 2022The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued revised guidelines on Business Continuity Management (BCM) for financial institutions (FIs).
The move aims to help FIs strengthen their resilience against service disruptions arising from IT outages, pandemic outbreaks, cyber-attacks and physical threats.
MAS said that the revisions take into account learnings from the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased digitalisation in the financial sector.
Under the revised guidelines, the regulator added that FIs should adopt a service-centric approach through timely recovery of critical business services facing customers.
They should also identify end-to-end dependencies that support critical business services, and address any gaps that could hinder the effective recovery of such services.
Lastly, FIs need to enhance threat monitoring and environmental scanning, as well as conduct regular audits, tests, and industry exercises.
The revised guidelines took into account feedback from two rounds of public consultation.
Vincent Loy
Vincent Loy, Assistant Managing Director (Technology) at MAS said,
“Against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile and complex environment, the new guidelines will help financial institutions to take an agile and holistic approach in sustaining their critical business services when faced with threats and risk of disruption.”
