I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, as well as invite you to the upcoming event.

Is this good or bad? Well, it depends for which purpose Financials Services Providers want to use Twitter. Those that take Twitter seriously can provide an additional service channel to their clients which can help to build stronger customer relationships. Those that consider Twitter only as a one-way communication or marketing tool haven’t understood the community nature of this service and will fail to provide any value.

And even if banks or insurers believe that Twitter is nothing more than a fad they should continue to keep an eye on this service. We have identified for example one example where an impostor tweeted under the name of a global investment banking and securities firm. This can seriously hurt your brand or confuse prospects and customers.  What do you think? Are you alrady tweeting and what? What’s your opinion about Twitter?

 Unlike seasonal influenza outbreaks, which are most dangerous to the frail and elderly, the majority of H1N1 victims are under the age of 25 years.  A small number of people infected (2%) develop severe illness and life-threatening pneumonia. Half to two thirds cases of severe and fatal infections have been in adults between the ages of 30 and 50 years, key contributors to the work force.   Though many had preexisting conditions such as respiratory diseases, notably asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and obesity, from a third to half, though of severe and fatal infections were in “previously healthy” young and middle aged people.  Stress levels are likely to be, and remain high.

 This is a good time to quietly and cheerfully check the status of your pandemic preparations– and even less reason to panic than usual.    The financial services industries were leaders in pandemic preparedness… but it never hurts to check, test and train–that is how one stays a leader.

• Things being as they are in the industry, the chances are very good that your team, partners and critical suppliers have had some staff-turnover or reductions.  Clearly identify and notify HR of IT staff with critical skills that must be retained during reductions in workforce if the bank expects to be able to operate or reopen after a disaster or during an influenza outbreak.   Make sure that policies and preparations for employees to work from home have not been rescinded since the flu crisis was “over”.
• Review existing BCM/DR and contingency plans to ensure that they are up to date from a personnel and supplier perspective.  Are your existing operations and emergency plans fully documented and able to be executed under new management and staffing if necessary? 
• Are sanitary supplies—such as hand sanitizer, tissues and masks available and in good supply?  What about your emergency supplies?  What about medical resources nearby the branch or office for workers who become sick at work?  Many of these may have been closed, or their hours curtailed, recently for financial reasons.
•  The WHO is concerned about the spread of H1N1 to less developed countries be certain that any outsourcers located there have at least met your agreed BCM/DR standards, and any special pandemic requirements of their local governments.  Are preparations still in place to repatriate overseas or traveling staff rapidly if conditions deteriorate?

The promotion to Phase 6 was expected, and is in itself unlikley to affect operations.  Keep an eye on pandemicflu.gov and Gartner’s own pandemic coverage for updates.

..and wash your hands, of course.

Two important implications of consumer migration for financial institutions are:

• Individual consumer migration will occur with little or no warning to the corporation
• Products and services must no longer be oriented only to the individual, but rather to a multi-generational household as well

The ability to retain customers in the face of consumer migration is a critical success factor for financial services firms in terms of preserving revenue and profitability.  To retain a customer, the financial institution must know the consumer is at risk of migration.  The institution must also understand the composition of the future multi-generational household in order to provide products and services that are oriented to this new composition.

The ability to do these two things can enable a financial institution not only to preserve revenue and profitability in the face of consumer migration, but to improve revenue and profitability by extending into new consolidated households.  Consolidated households, due to having additional inhabitants, are likely to have higher than average overall spend.  Consumer migration is in these ways both a threat and an opportunity for financial institutions.

First, don’t panic— if you are a US bank you should already have a written and tested pandemic plan in place.  We suggest you review it, check your local regulator for additional guidance and brief your organizational counterparts as to what will happen if the plan is activated.  

Second—don’t panic.  The news media is doing that for you, perhaps as a relief from covering the …umm what was it again? O yeah, The Great Economic Downturn and Banking Crisis.

Third, after not panicking, check your staffing schedules to make sure you can cover higher absenteeism.  The recent outbreaks of the Swine flu are highlighting the need for organizations to have pandemic plans that address workforce absenteeism rates of 40% or higher. There are 20 laboratory-confirmed human cases in California, Texas, Ohio, Kansas and New York. In fact, our colleagues with Roberta  in  Chicago for the Gartner Business Continuity Management Summit have already been notified that at least one company planning to attend cannot because they have already initiated their crisis management plan to monitor the swine flu outbreak in their area. With luck, this will be a very minor event as according to the WHO “laboratory testing has found the swine influenza A (H1N1) virus susceptible to the prescription antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir.”

Immediate steps for organizations to take include:

• Go to www.pandemicflu.gov to find out the actions the US government recommends to ensure workforce safety and continuous business operations.  Make sure senior management sees it: our experience shows there were a lot of high level scoffers at the possibility this would occur.  Watch your main regulator’s site for additional guidance as the situation evolves.

• Download and examine the FFIEC’s “Pandemic Flu Exercise of 2007 After Action Report” immediately, and disseminate their findings across your organization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only large-scale testing of business pandemic plans ever conducted.

• Download Rick DeLotto’s research note “New U.S. Guidance on IT in Pandemics” dated March 3, 2008.

• It is, as they say, never too early for proper hygiene, and a “wash your hands” campaign is a great way to start a “yes we are REALLY serious” about this awareness build-up.  Hand sanitizers do no good at all sitting on the shelf.  Emphasize the urgency of performing personal hygiene disciplines that will inhibit the spread of the virus.

• Identify existing and projected critical skills shortages; and initiate staff cross-training, testing and certification. Make sure that cross-trained personnel are also given the appropriate access rights in your applications. This is the longest lead-time and most disruptive of the improvements.

• Determine which business operations are sustainable, at what level, and likely durations of downtime for normal business operations with staff absentee rates of 40%. Test for various combinations of leaders and skilled staff.

• Testing should start immediately to isolate and remediate problem areas. Testing should be rigorous, inventive, ongoing and documented.

Gartner has many research notes related to pandemic planning and we will continue to update you as to the severity of events and actions you should take as the situation evolves. Please go to www.gartner.com for more information.

Social networking sites provide businesses a new way to extend their brand identity, establish a community experience for their customers and provide personalized interactions.  At the same time, such sites usher in novel forms of risk that can’t always be mitigated through traditional risk management strategies. Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn and Twitter, along with countless blogs and chats are Web environments where anonymously supplied information about a company’s products and services are shared and compared, in some cases inaccurately.

Social media exposes firms to significant risks including serious damage to a company’s reputation.  With a proactive approach you can influence and counteract how your organization is portrayed on these social media.  That requires companies to create an Internet reputation risk management plan that addresses what visitors to your site express, what your employees share on other sites and most significantly what things are said about your firm on sites over which you have no direct control.

Here’s how to begin to get a grip on protecting your reputation on the Web;

• Actively engage on social network venues to understand how reputation can be impacted by the interactions
• Gather information on the social media activities your company is considering.  Then assess the areas of vulnerability, create counteraction plans and communicate them to employees.
• Dedicate at least one employee to the monitoring of your online reputation
• Build a process to identify new reputation risk elements as social media evolves

The risks enterprises face as a result of participating in social media are real.  But so too are the benefits.  Therefore don’t let risk blind you from taking advantage of the transformational communication opportunities arise from social media. 

I’ll let my colleague French Caldwell have the last word. Here is his pithy take on risk management, Risk Management and Business Performance Are Compatible):

“Risk management is perceived as the opposite of business agility. In reality, risk management is about building a more agile enterprise – that is enabling an organization to take the greatest amount of risk in the safest way possible. It’s not about saying “no” to taking a risk; it’s about how to say “yes”.