TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Fake Flu Pandemic Hits Banks Across U.S.

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, The Associated Press

Published: September 25, 2007

WASHINGTON - Don't be alarmed if your local bank teller is looking a bit sickly over the next three weeks. It is only a cyberillness.

Hundreds of banks and other financial institutions are participating in the largest test of its kind ever conducted to ensure the nation's financial system can keep functioning in case of an outbreak of pandemic flu.

The test began Monday and is scheduled to run for three weeks. More than 2,700 financial institutions have signed up to participate.

'This shows how much the business sector is focused on pandemic flu planning,' Valerie Abend, Treasury's deputy assistant secretary for critical infrastructure protection, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Treasury, aided by other federal agencies and the private sector, has devised a three-week script for how a serious outbreak of bird flu might affect operations at banks, as well as at credit unions, securities firms and insurance companies.

According to the Treasury scenario, a number of cases of bird flu in humans are reported overseas and the illness spreads quickly to the United States by people traveling on international flights.

From that beginning, the Treasury scenario presents financial institutions with a number of challenges over the course of the three-week exercise.

The exercise is part of a plan unveiled by President Bush in May 2006 directing various government agencies to upgrade their planning for pandemic outbreaks. One of the biggest challenges financial institutions will face is how to cope with absenteeism. In week one, the Treasury exercise directs the financial organizations to assume that 25 percent of their work force is not coming in.

The 25 percent absentee rate will jump to 49 percent in week two.

Abend said the various projections were compiled with the help of government scientists.

Government financial regulators also helped put together scenarios on how the stock market will behave as well as what the value of the dollar and various commodities such as oil will be doing.

The dollar is projected to rise as investors seek a safe haven with the spreading global illness and stock prices are projected to fall because of worries about what the pandemic will do to economic activity.

Absent employees won't be the only troubles facing the financial institutions. Under Treasury's scenario, they also will have to cope with shrinking Internet bandwidths as more and more people try to work from home. Cash withdrawals from ATM machines are expected to rise sharply and getting the machines refilled will present problems because of rising absentee rates at the armored car companies and the difficulty of getting fuel for the armored trucks as gasoline refineries curtail their production.

Abend said the test should get the institutions thinking about where they need to improve their contingency plans.

'What would you do if you don't have access to key people? Have you cross-trained enough employees to sufficiently cover that?' she asked. 'We want to do a really robust test.'

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT