The Ontario Securities Commissions has issued a notice emphasizing the importance of business continuity planning.

The notice indicates that the OSC is part of the global efforts to address the potential impact of incidents that could disrupt normal business operations, which is an ongoing priority for financial industry participants and financial regulatory authorities.

Recent acts of terrorism, the 2003 outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the Avian Flu, and various widespread natural disasters have served to heighten that priority by underlining the substantial risk of major operational disruptions to the financial system, it explains.

It notes that the International Joint Forum published a paper in August 2006 stating that financial regulatory authorities and financial industry participants have a shared interest in promoting the operational integrity of the financial system to major disruptions.

The notice says that the Joint Forum paper defines business continuity management as “… a whole-of-business approach that includes policy, standards and procedures for ensuring that specified operations can be maintained or recovered in a timely fashion in the event of a disruption”.

It also indicates that “… effective business continuity management concentrates on the impact, as opposed to the source, of the disruption, which affords financial industry participants and financial authorities greater flexibility to address a broad range of disruptions”.

The notice says that OSC staff believe that financial industry participants as well as financial regulatory authorities should regularly test their business continuity plans, evaluate their effectiveness, and update their business continuity management.