Chris Skinner's blog Shaping the future of finance
We talk about pandemics as a result of bird flu and other concerns.
Luckily,
we haven’t had one yet but, you never know. After all, looking around
the fellow inhabitants of the world’s subway systems, H G Wells had it
right when he referred to morlocks living underground and who knows
what you might catch off them.
Just in case therefore, the
world’s largest institutions are testing a pandemic across the USA in
September. The exercise runs from 24th September through 12th October and involves almost 2,500 US financial firms.
Although
it’s all fictitious, the idea is that you start with your full staff
quota but they rapidly drop down like dead flies until you’re left with
the few superhumans who are immune. Either that, or the last one to
leave the building turns out the lights.
Last year, the FSA tried
the same thing over here in old blighty. All was well to begin with,
as 17 out of 20 staff turned up for work until the end of the
simulation with only 2 out of 5 available. Branches were closed and BT
had to make lots of mugs of cocoa and tea to keep the infrastructures
running and the cable guys hot.
Read the whole results of the FSA’s experience here (six page pdf).
Meantime, I have one concern.
The USA is running this pandemic through end of September to mid-October. When and where is SIBOS this year? Mmmm … good timing.
