[OR] [GEL] [E3] [C1] Starting Your OR Implementation for Great Eastern Life

eBook 3: Chapter 1

Starting Your Operational Resilience Implementation

Introduction

The third instalment of the eBook series, “Starting Your Operational Resilience Implementation,” forms the practical execution guide within the series “Implementing Operational Resilience in Insurance: A Practical Guide for Great Eastern Life.” While the earlier volumes—eBook 1: Understanding Your Organisation and eBook 2: Implementing Operational Resilience for Great Eastern Life—provide the conceptual foundation and strategic framework for operational resilience, this volume focuses on translating those concepts into practical implementation activities.

For an insurance organisation such as Great Eastern Life, operational resilience is essential to ensure that critical insurance services remain available even during severe disruptions such as cyber incidents, system failures, third-party service outages, or large-scale operational crises. The insurance industry plays a crucial role in protecting policyholders’ financial security, and therefore, insurers must ensure that core services such as policy issuance, premium collection, claims payments, and customer servicing remain continuously available within defined tolerance levels.

This eBook therefore guides practitioners through the practical steps required to operationalise resilience, focusing on the detailed analytical work required to identify vulnerabilities, map dependencies, test disruption scenarios, and determine the organisation’s ability to withstand operational shocks.

This volume drills down into the Phase 2 (P2) – Implementation Phase of the Operational Resilience Planning Methodology. The methodology moves from strategic planning into operational execution by analysing how critical services actually function within the organisation.

The Operational Resilience Journey at RHB Bank is designed as a progressive learning and implementation pathway:

• eBook 1 – Understanding Your Organisation
  Establishes organisational context, business models, important business services, and governance foundations.
  
  
• eBook 2 – Implementing Operational Resilience for RHB Bank
  Introduces the OR framework, regulatory expectations, and high-level methodology aligned to supervisory guidance.
  
  
• eBook 3 – Starting Your OR Implementation
  Drills into Phase 2 of the OR Planning Methodology, where analysis becomes granular, evidence-driven, and execution-focused.

This eBook assumes that readers have completed or are familiar with the outputs of eBook 1 and eBook 2 and are now ready to engage in detailed operational resilience planning.

The five core stages of the “Implement” phase in the Operational Resilience Planning Methodology are central to this ebook. These stages form the backbone of OR implementation:

• Identify Critical Business Services [DP]
  Determining the business services that, if disrupted, could pose a significant risk to Metrobank’s customers, market integrity, or financial stability.
  
  
• Map Dependency and Connectivity [MD]
  Uncovering and documenting the relationships and interdependencies—both internal and external—that support the delivery of critical business services.
  
  
• Map Processes and Resources [MPR]
  Cataloguing the key operational elements—people, systems, data, and facilities—that underpin each critical business service's performance and continuity.
  
  
• Establish Impact Tolerances [ITo]
  Setting defined thresholds for disruption to determine how much stress a service can endure before unacceptable harm occurs.
  
  
• Identify Severe but Plausible Scenarios [SuPS]
  Identifying Severe but Plausible Scenarios that could critically impact each detailed process within the Critical Business Service
  
  
• Perform Scenario Testing [ST]
  Validating assumptions and capabilities by simulating disruptive scenarios to evaluate how well the bank can maintain or recover its critical business services.

As part of the Identification of Critical Business Services  and Phase 2 planning activities, the following Critical Business Services (CBS) for RHB Bank are used as the primary scope for analysis and illustration throughout this eBook:

1. Policy Issuance & Underwriting Services
2. Premium Collection & Policy Administration
3. Claims Processing & Claims Payment
4. Customer Policy Servicing
5. Digital Insurance Platform Services
6. Insurance Agent & Distribution Support
7. Fund Management & Investment Services
8. Regulatory Reporting & Compliance Operations

This list marks the formal start of the Identification of Critical Business Services and is intended to be inserted directly into the operational resilience report as part of the organisation’s documented methodology and scope definition.

This eBook is delivered as part of the value-adding and complementary services offered to organisations that intend to:

• Implement an actual operational resilience or BCM project, or
• Upgrade an existing BCM programme to meet evolving regulatory and supervisory expectations.

It supports organisations participating in the BCM Institute’s training-led implementation approach, particularly those attending:

• Certification programmes, and
• Competency-based professional training courses.

Rather than treating training and implementation as separate activities, this approach integrates learning, application, and evidence creation, allowing organisations to build real operational resilience artefacts while developing internal capability and practitioner competence.By the end of this eBook, readers should be able to:

• Translate high-level Critical Business Services into detailed, defensible process maps
• Identify and document material dependencies and resource concentrations
• Set impact tolerances that are realistic, measurable, and regulator-ready
• Design and execute scenario testing that focuses on service continuity rather than system recovery
• Produce structured outputs suitable for internal governance, regulatory review, and audit scrutiny

This eBook is not intended to be read passively. It is designed to be used as a working reference during an operational resilience exercise, supporting teams as they move from planning to execution in a controlled, methodical, and regulator-aligned manner.

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