Bank invests in business continuity

摘要

When two banks merge, a primary area of concern is addressing the "What if disaster strikes?" scenario. Whether a potential disaster is natural or man-made, a sound business-continuity and disaster-recovery plan is important to the bank, its regulators and its customers. Newly merged NewBridge Bank, a Greensboro, N.C.-based financial services and banking company with more than 40 full-service banking offices in the Piedmont Triad region, Virginia and the Wilmington, N.C., area, wanted to take the best business-continuity (BC) and disaster-recovery (DR) strategies from each of its merging banks in order to prepare for the worst. As a co-leader of New-Bridge's IT transition team, Richard Balentine, then director of technology and operations of Lexington State Bank, one of the merged banks, began by looking at the best way to do that while effectively merging operations and providing for the safety of NewBridge's people and assets. What complicated the transition was the new stature of NewBridge, which was effectively doubled in size. This presented the bank with more intense regulatory scrutiny and business-continuity/ disaster-recovery requirements.