How do you foster a culture of operational risk awareness and resilience in your payment system team?

3 Promote and reward risk culture

The third step to managing operational risks is to promote and reward risk culture. Risk culture is the set of values, beliefs, and behaviors that influence how your payment system team perceives, handles, and responds to operational risks. You should foster a positive and proactive risk culture in your payment system team, where operational risks are recognized, reported, and resolved in a timely and transparent manner. You should also encourage and reward your payment system team for their risk awareness, risk ownership, risk learning, and risk innovation. You should also provide your payment system team with adequate training, resources, and support to enable them to manage operational risks effectively.

4 Learn and improve from incidents

The fourth step to managing operational risks is to learn and improve from incidents. Incidents are the events or situations that result in operational losses or disruptions in your payment system. You should have a robust and consistent incident management process in your payment system, where incidents are detected, reported, analyzed, resolved, and escalated as appropriate. You should also conduct root cause analysis and lessons learned exercises for each incident, and identify and implement corrective and preventive actions to prevent recurrence or reduce impact. You should also share and disseminate the learnings and best practices from incidents with your payment system team, as well as with other relevant stakeholders, such as payment service providers, regulators, and customers.

5 Prepare and test contingency plans

The fifth step to managing operational risks is to prepare and test contingency plans. Contingency plans are the alternative arrangements or procedures that you have in place to ensure the continuity and recovery of your payment system in the event of a major operational disruption or crisis. You should develop and document contingency plans that cover the key operational functions, processes, systems, people, and resources of your payment system, as well as the roles and responsibilities, communication channels, and escalation protocols. You should also test and update your contingency plans on a regular basis, and involve your payment system team, as well as other relevant stakeholders, such as payment service providers, regulators, and customers, in the testing and validation process.

6 Benchmark and collaborate with peers

The sixth step to managing operational risks is to benchmark and collaborate with peers. Benchmarking is the process of comparing your payment system's operational performance, practices, and standards with those of other similar or leading payment systems. Collaboration is the process of sharing information, knowledge, and experience with other payment system operators or organizations on operational risk issues and solutions. You should benchmark and collaborate with peers to identify gaps, opportunities, and best practices for improving your payment system's operational risk management. You should also participate in industry forums, networks, and initiatives that promote operational risk awareness and resilience in the payment system sector.