[OR] [UBP] [E3] [C1] Starting Your OR Implementation

Chapter 1

Starting Your OR Implementation

The journey towards operational resilience does not end with planning—it begins with execution.

Having established a strong foundation in the first two eBooks, “Understanding Your Organisation” and “Implementing Operational Resilience Planning Methodology,” this third instalment, “Starting Your OR Implementation,” marks the critical transition from strategy to action.

For the Union Bank of the Philippines, a leading digital-first bank in the Philippines, operational resilience is not merely a regulatory requirement but a strategic capability.

This eBook serves as a practical guide to operationalising resilience by translating frameworks, policies, and methodologies into actionable outputs across business units.

This chapter introduces the structure, purpose, and expected outcomes of the implementation phase, which is designed to systematically capture and consolidate submissions from across the organisation.

These submissions form the backbone of the bank’s operational resilience capability—ensuring that critical services remain available even under severe disruption.

Purpose of This eBook

The primary purpose of this eBook is to kick-start and guide the structured submission of operational resilience implementation deliverables across the bank's business units.

It aims to:

• Provide a clear and standardised approach for documenting operational resilience components
• Translate high-level planning outputs into detailed, operational-level artefacts
• Enable business units to align their processes with regulatory expectations, particularly those outlined in BSP Circular No. 1203 on Operational Resilience
• Serve as a reference guide and working document for OR practitioners, business leaders, and risk managers

More importantly, this eBook ensures that the outputs generated are practical, auditable, and aligned with real-world banking operations.

This eBook represents the execution layer of the three-part series:

• Understanding Your Organisation
  Establishes organisational context, operating environment, and critical services
• Implementing OR Planning Methodology
  Defines the governance, strategy, and planning stages
• Starting Your OR Implementation (This eBook)

While the first two eBooks provide the “what” and “why,” this eBook delivers the “how”—through structured templates, tables, and guided outputs.

Focus on Phase 2 [P2]: Operational Resilience in Action

Phase 2 of the Operational Resilience Planning Methodology is the point at which resilience concepts are embedded in day-to-day operations.

This eBook addresses the six key requirements of Phase 2 as requested by regulators globally,  namely:

1. Outline Detailed Processes (Phase 2 – Stage 1) [DP]
   Translating high-level business services into detailed, end-to-end operational processes that enable service delivery.
2. Map Dependency (Phase 2 – Stage 2) [MD]
   Identifying internal and external dependencies, including people, technology, data, facilities, third parties, and suppliers.
3. Map Processes and Resources (Phase 2 – Stage 2) [MPR]
   Establishing clear linkages between processes and the resources required to support them under normal and disrupted conditions.
4. Establish Impact Tolerances (Phase 2 – Stage 2) [iTo]
   Defining the maximum tolerable level of disruption for each critical business service, aligned with client harm, market integrity, financial stability, and regulatory expectations.
5. Identify Severe but Plausible Scenarios (Phase 2 – Stage 4) [SuPS]
   Developing stress scenarios that meaningfully challenge the organisation’s ability to remain within its defined impact tolerances.
6. Perform Scenario Testing (Phase 2 – Stage 4) [ST]
   Testing the organisation’s capability to withstand disruption and identifying vulnerabilities, control gaps, and areas for resilience enhancement.

Each of these requirements is explored in the context of the organisation’s operating model and service landscape.

This eBook consolidates implementation outputs for the following eight Critical Business Services of the Union Bank of the Philippines:

• CBS-1: Deposit and Account Services
• CBS-2: Payments, Funds Transfer, and Bill Payment Services
• CBS-3: Digital Banking and Customer Access Channels
• CBS-4: Card-Based Payment and Cash Access Services
• CBS-5: Lending and Credit Servicing
• CBS-6: Corporate Cash Management and Collections/Disbursements
• CBS-7: Supply Chain Financing and Embedded Business Finance
• CBS-8: Remittance and Customer Fund Receipt Services

Each CBS is analysed through the lens of process mapping, dependency identification, and scenario testing, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of vulnerabilities and resilience capabilities.

Each CBS is examined through the lens of process resilience, resource dependencies, tolerance thresholds, and scenario-driven vulnerabilities, enabling readers to understand not only what needs to be done, but how to do it in a structured, regulator-ready manner.

This eBook is designed for practitioners—risk managers, BCM professionals, operations leaders, compliance teams, and senior management—who are responsible for building, enhancing, or validating operational resilience capabilities.

It serves as both a hands-on implementation guide and a reference artefact, supporting consistency, traceability, and continuous improvement across the OR lifecycle.

This is a complimentary service offered by BCM Institute to organisations intending to implement an Operational Resilience project or enhance an existing Operational Resilience programme.

It is specifically designed to support organisations adopting the BCM Institute’s training-led implementation approach, where learning is directly integrated with real organisational deliverables.

For participants attending BCM Institute’s certification or competency-based training courses, this eBook serves as:

• A practical reference for applying training concepts to live organisational exercises,
• A structured guide for developing implementation artefacts, and
• A bridge between professional development and real-world resilience outcomes.

“Starting Your OR Implementation” represents the turning point from planning to execution in the operational resilience journey of the Union Bank of the Philippines.

By systematically capturing detailed, business-unit-level submissions across all critical services, this eBook transforms resilience from a conceptual framework into a living, operational capability.

It reinforces a key principle:

Operational resilience is not achieved through documentation alone—but through disciplined implementation, continuous testing, and organisational commitment.

This eBook equips professionals with the structure, tools, and guidance needed to build, validate, and sustain resilience in an increasingly complex and uncertain environment.

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