CUNA E-Scan top 10 trends: Litmus testing from A DR/BCP perspective
CUNA publishes an Environmental Scan (E-Scan) annually to alert Credit Union strategic planners of critical issues or trends for the coming year.
As a former VP/IT for a credit union I can recall receiving a copy each May and participating in lengthy discussions on the topics as they related to my credit union. The information was invaluable and led to many strategic initiatives being pursued (or not!). One area of conversation that tends to be highly overlooked when discussing new products, services and/or technologies is their impact on the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans (DR/BCP). That cool new lending system spec’d to support the influx of increasing loan volume may have serious impact on your bandwidth!
In Part 1 of our “CUNA e-Scan Top 10 Trends – A DR/BCP Perspective” we’ll take a look at the Top 10 Trends and continue our series with more in-depth discussions on each area in future posts.
CUNA Top 10 Trends Impacting Credit Unions – 2014 (CUNA COMMENTS IN QUOTES)
1. Mobile payments
According to the e-Scan report “Mobile payments are growing by 68% annually … Industry observers say this transaction type is both the single greatest opportunity—and threat—for credit unions.”
The “threat” as described by the e-Scan refers more to losing members to the competition in the mobile payment world than it does to your DR/BCP plan – but hey, without members, um, you really don’t need to worry about resiliency right? So what is making mobile payments such a growing threat and what operational and technology improvements can be made to stop the leak before it starts? Our next post will look at this growing trend/threat and discuss mitigation strategies.
2. Mobile banking
“About two billion smartphones will be active worldwide by the end of 2013, according to Deloitte … It’s quickly becoming a basic expectation, especially among younger consumers. But there’s a downside, and it involves Trend No. 3.”
I experienced an online banking outage once when I ran our IT department at our credit union and I’d have to say, I’d rather go through a core conversion than to feel the pressure of 80,000 members without access to their accounts. In terms of DR/BCP, online banking disaster “opportunities” lurk around each corner – connectivity (internal, external, browser compatibility, security (!) and of course reliability/speed. We’ll look closely at how you can strengthen your online banking strategy to ensure maximum uptime/security.
3. Mobile malware
“With the proliferation of smartphones and the explosion of downloadable applications, it was only a matter of time before malware started targeting mobile devices …Your credit union must invest more in mobile malware detection and prevention to keep pace with increasing threats.”
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