Business continuity & resilience

UBS is committed to ensuring continuity of service for our clients and the broader financial markets.

In line with the latest regulatory expectations and guidelines, UBS’s Business Continuity & Resilience (BCR) program encompasses a mature Business Continuity Management program aligned to industry best practices to ensure Enhanced Operational Resilience.

Standard Business Continuity Management minimizes the risk and impact of an unplanned disruption of business activities by applying readiness and response plans against a standard set of impact scenarios: Loss of Building; Loss of Critical Technology; Loss of Critical Third Party; or Unavailability of Staff.

Additionally, Enhanced Operational Resilience minimizes the risk and impact of an unplanned disruption on markets and clients, and ensures the safety and soundness of UBS’s most important business services. It includes risk mitigation beyond standard BCM scenarios, including cyber-attack.

Furthermore, when business activities are at risk of significant disruption, Crisis Management provides the communication protocols and pre-determined escalation paths to ensure effective response and a managed recovery to meet pre-determined recovery objectives.

The BCR Program covers all UBS business units and locations. It is subject to review by all applicable regulatory authorities.

Key features

  • A team of full-time BCR professionals responsible for managing and monitoring the Firm’s preparedness for both standard and severe scenarios
  • Defined global, regional and business aligned governance bodies with executive ownership of BCR
  • Training and awareness for staff with defined BCR roles and responsibilities
  • Well established business continuity and resilience practices, crisis management procedures and policies to ensure appropriate and prioritized resilience in order to meet recovery objectives
  • Risk and impact assessments of locations and processes to ensure appropriate plans are in place to mitigate prevalent risks
  • Review and testing of continuity and crisis management plans, systems, third parties, and data centers to ensure recovery objectives and timeframes can be met
  • Global, regional and local/intra-region recovery solutions including dedicated and displacement recovery seating; wide-spread remote working capabilities; splitting or transferring work between geographically disbursed teams
  • Defined crisis management governance and escalation protocols with clear crisis communications strategies
  • Timely monitoring of, and adaptation to, changing client and regulatory requirements

Further information

For further information relating to UBS business continuity resilience and crisis management, please contact your relationship manager.

January 2023