Glossary · Operations
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
A business continuity plan documents how critical operations continue, or resume within target times, after a disruption such as a system outage, site loss, cyber incident or staff loss.
A BCP starts from a business impact analysis that identifies critical processes — for funds, typically cash and wire release, trade settlement, reconciliations, NAV production and investor dealing — and sets recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) for each. It then defines alternate sites or remote working, system and data recovery, call trees, vendor dependencies, and trained backups for every key role.
Regulators, investors and auditors expect funds and their service providers to maintain and test BCPs. Due diligence questionnaires ask for the date and results of the latest test, and SOC 1 or ISAE 3402 reports often include continuity controls. Distributed delivery across several locations reduces single-site risk.
Common gaps are plans that have never been tested end to end, reliance on a single person for critical approvals, and dependencies on third-party providers whose own continuity arrangements are unknown. Plans should be reviewed at least annually and after significant changes.
Related terms
Where this comes up in our work
Controls & Governance
Controls are not a layer we add for audit season. They are how each process is designed, documented and reviewed from the first day of an engagement.
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