The COVID-19 pandemic continues to stretch institutions’ thoughts and outlooks of what business as usual is. There are two components that will be under even more scrutiny – Business Continuity Plans (‘BCPs’) and corporate governance structures - some scrutiny will be unjustified. There can never be a complete plan for every crisis. However, there will be warranted discussions. Boards, partnerships, and entrepreneurial leadership will all come into question as shareholders, employees and the public assess their actions – fairly or not.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly after the first release in this series, I have had numerous conversations surrounding business continuity plans (‘BCPs’). What was evident were apparent deficiencies surrounding scenarios other than cyber-attacks and natural disasters.

In Financial Action Task Force (‘FATF’) President’s statement issued on April 1, 2020, President Xiangmin Liu admonished worldwide supervisors, financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies to continue sharing information with the private sector to prioritize and address key money laundering (‘ML’) risk relating to fraud and terrorist financing (‘TF’) risk linked to COVID-19. This statement is aligned with FATF’s leadership in the AML and financial crimes space as the article further added that FATF stands ready to provide further AML/CFT guidance to support the current global efforts to tackle the COVID‑19 crisis and its effects.

Unfortunately, the thought of business continuity plans (‘BCP’) seemed a novel idea only months ago for many businesses. Most businesses felt that disaster recovery plans geared toward managing the impacts of hurricanes were sufficient – COVID-19 has proven that many business owners and operators may have fallen short in their preparations. Don’t be alarmed. If you have not heard the acronym BCP before, its simply a strategic management process aimed at minimizing the social and economic fallout in a company due to disruptions in normal business activities. The lack of preparedness was manifested in laptop inventory in many of the approved technology vendors being depleted in anticipation of imminent curfews and lock downs.