News

Covid-19 Crisis: Bank’s Response

The management in a bank during the current crisis has to cover wide range of specific topics. Here is the list of the most relevant questions the crisis managers in banks should ask these days:

Workforce Management and Health by EY:

• Are you tracking globally mobile employees?
• Do you have policies in place to respond to stranded employees / separated families /foreign employees denied entry to the country?
• Can you quickly segment your workforce into critical/non-critical and adapt staffing plans?
• Do you know who your ‘at risk’ employees are, have you established a consistent policy and a direct line of communication?
• Have you reviewed HR policies to make sure they are consistent with public health recommendations?

Customer and Communication
• Do you feel the boards of your major clients are ready to react?
• Have you considered how you may leverage your vulnerable customer policies / efforts for impacted customers / clients?
• How did you come to the decisions you have made to date on Forbearance?
• How are you planning on making this real for your customers?
• What has been the feedback / customer views on this to date?
• How are you scanning the market for updates on this topic?
• Are you ready to respond to questions that will come from governments, shareholders, analysts?

Digital Services
• Do you have plans in place to promote use of digital services?
• What support and training can be offered to customers, in particular for elderly and at risk groups, who may need to rely
on digital services?
• Is there a need for product enhancements, around forbearance and liquidity products
• What physical services need to be maintained for those customers that can’t access digital services

Business Continuity Planning
• Does the group pandemic BCP have a scenario that is similar to that which is being experienced currently?
• Has the pandemic BCP previously been ‘war gamed / pre-mortemed’ and are there results / findings that have been
incorporated?
• How, and to who, is BCP deployment reported on, what visibility is it getting?
• What are the big blocks of your BCP (e.g. People, Clients, Suppliers, Communications, Governance, Controls and Reporting) and who owns it?
• Do you understand how your FMI footprint may be impacted?
• When and how have you tested your remote work capabilities (access, capacity, bandwidth)?

Physical Infrastructure
• Are you able to ensure cash replenishment of all ATMs?  What additional measures need to be put in place
to restock ATMs?
• Are there contingency plans for a reduced branch service?  What would be the core network to be maintained and how would this be managed?
• Have you refreshed your business continuity plan including review of sufficient and alternate back up sites?

IT & Cyber-Resilience

• Have you tested IT infrastructure resilience for increased levels of remote working and increased use of digital services?
• Are you pro-actively testing the capacity of IT infrastructure against the risk if increased cyber-attacks
• Are you able to screen and monitor increased risks of cyber-related fraud and increased using of tactics such
as phishing?

Operational Implementation
• Have you tested ability to implement forbearance measures announced?
• Are processes in place to ensure all customers are treated consistently and in line with TCF?
• Are the operational interfaces understood between policy changes and collection and recovery processes?

In mid-term, focus on ensuring:
• the troubled but perspective clients can be provided adequate forbearance meassures and emergency liquidity
• your employees and clients can operate via remote access and digital channels
• dynamic modelling/forecasting of the impacts of crisis and your actions on your liquidity and capital

Pavel Riegger
Partner, Head of Financial
Services Central Europe
pavel.riegger@cz.ey.com
+420 225 335 114
+420 603 577 914

Martin Majdloch
Partner, Financial Services
Advisory
martin.majdloch@cz.ey.com
+420 225 335 558
+420 731 627 232