A critical business service is a service MLRe provides to an external party (a cedant, a regulator, a counterparty) whose disruption could cause intolerable harm to those parties, to MLRe's financial position or to the stability of the market. It is a service as seen from outside, not a department, a system or an internal process.
The distinction matters because resilience is then measured on what reaches the cedant or regulator, however many teams and systems are involved.
Start from the value chain: risk assumption and underwriting, claims recovery and settlement, retrocession management, investment and asset-liability management, and financial and regulatory reporting. For each, ask "What does MLRe deliver, to whom, and what would they lose if it stopped?"
Confirm which parts of MLRe are in scope (normally the whole organisation) and what the output must achieve: a Board-approved inventory of critical services that drives the rest of the programme.
For each candidate service, assess the effect of disruption on cedants and takaful operators, on policyholders indirectly, on MLRe's finances, on regulatory standing and on reputation. Capture inputs, processes, outputs, dependencies, and recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Run workshops with Underwriting, Claims, Actuarial, Finance, Investments, IT, Risk and Compliance. They know what happens in practice, including peak periods such as treaty renewals and period-end reporting.
Rank services with consistent criteria and agree the cut-off for "critical". A scoring approach with clear thresholds avoids debates based on seniority.
Keep an inventory that states each service's description, owner, recipients, inputs and outputs, dependencies, recovery objectives and regulatory relevance.
Present to the OR Steering Committee, then to the Board for approval. Review at least annually and whenever the business changes.
| # | Service | Recipient | Why it may be critical |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Treaty underwriting and renewal (including retakaful) | Life insurers and takaful operators | Cedants need reinsurance capacity in place at renewal dates |
| 2 | Claims recovery processing and settlement | Cedants | Delayed recoveries affect cedants' liquidity and claims-paying to policyholders |
| 3 | Retrocession management | MLRe and retrocessionaires | Protects MLRe's capital and ability to accept risk |
| 4 | Financial reporting and regulatory submissions | BNM and other authorities | Statutory obligations with fixed deadlines |
| 5 | Investment operations supporting liability matching | MLRe, cedants indirectly | Supports solvency and payment capacity |
This list is a starting hypothesis, drawn from MLRe's published business model. MLRe's own analysis may add, merge, or remove services.
A Board-approved list of critical business services focuses all later work. Chapter 10 maps what each service depends on.
| eBook 2: Implementing Operational Resilience for Malaysian Life Reinsurance |
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| C1 | C2 | C8 | C14 |
| "Implement" Phase of the Operational Resilience Planning Methodology | ||||||
| C8 | C9 | C10 | C11 | C12 | C13 | |