DORA’s Knocking: Will Financial Services Organisations Weather the Storm?

James Dodson at Sabio discusses the urgent need for financial services organizations in the UK and Europe to prepare for the upcoming enforcement of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

As the winds of regulatory change sweep across the financial services landscape in the UK and Europe, a new force is approaching – and fast.

DORA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act.

But, as a financial services organisation, are you among the 60% that AREN’T prepared for it?

With the clock ticking – and less than six months to go until DORA enforcement starts on 17th January 2025 – it’s time to batten down the hatches and ensure your operational resilience can withstand any tempest.

For those that are feeling slightly adrift ahead of this regulatory change, fear not. By focusing on four key areas, you can chart a course towards compliance and robust customer experience (CX) operational resilience.

Navigating the Disaster Recovery Seas

First things first: identify the weak points in your Disaster Recovery strategy. A mere hour-long workshop with CX experts can reveal:

• Your risk level and its severity
• Quick, often cost-free wins to implement immediately
• Particularly vulnerable customer segments
• DORA’s specific impact on your operations

Riding the Cloud Wave

Leveraging a consumption-based Cloud Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is no longer a luxury— it’s a necessity. You can get standby CX DR solutions ready to handle significant call volumes, with guaranteed action in less than six hours.

Even if you find yourself in choppy waters without a backup plan, we can throw you a lifeline, recovering your CX on our DR capability. Utilising technologies like Amazon Connect, Twilio Flex, and Avaya CPaaS, solutions from all the public cloud providers ensure your customer experience stays afloat, come rain or shine

Avoiding the ‘Fire and Forget’ Fallacy

While public cloud solutions might seem like smooth sailing, adopting a ‘fire and forget’ mentality could leave you stranded. Even with the most robust CCaaS platform, you need to demonstrate a solid DR plan and strategy.

Ask yourself: How would you cope with a 5-day outage? What about 10 days? What would the impact be? Recent high-profile CCaaS outages serve as stark reminders that no organisation is unsinkable.

Regular Testing: Your Compass to Resilience

Just as a captain wouldn’t set sail without checking their instruments, regular testing is crucial for operational resilience. Work to:

• Conduct regular DR testing
• Document resilience outcomes and capabilities
• Provide proof to auditors and the FCA
• Implement success management for your DR outcomes
• Continuously evolve your service through re-iteration

The Cost of Failure: A Cautionary Tale

The consequences of operational resilience failures can be catastrophic. Take the story of a recent UK retail and commercial bank’s costly lesson: a £48m fine was just the tip of the iceberg.

The bank suffered losses exceeding £340m and hemorrhaged 60,000 customers. Even the CIO faced a personal £80,000 fine. The long-term impact on it’s reputation? Immeasurable.

When critical incidents disrupt customer services, contact centres face overwhelming pressure. With new regulations looming in 2025, ‘winging it’ is not a strategy. Nor is blindly trusting a single public cloud contact centre solution, as recent outages have shown.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Sabio – View the Original Article

For more information about Sabio - visit the Sabio Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.