With images of tornado-wrecked homes still fresh for Massachusetts residents, it’s fitting that St. Mary’s Credit Union recently went to great lengths to run an emergency-preparedness drill – but this practice run is considerably more elaborate than most.
In a multi-day drill, the staff of the Marlborough-based St. Mary’s took up office in a mobile recovery facility – a rented, custom-designed tractor trailer – where employees experience how they would keep back-office operations up and running in the event of a serious interruption of business, said spokesman Tony Battista. The event was planned before a June 1 tornado ripped through Massachusetts homes and businesses, including one seriously damaged Berkshire Bank branch.
Still, Battista added, the tornado underscored what can happen during severe-weather events and certainly brought it to people’s minds.
Doing this kind of drill is no minor decision, said David Tedford, a locally based account executive with Texas-based Rentsys Recovery Services, and St. Mary’s disaster recovery provider.
A drill such as the one St. Mary’s conducted costs about $15,000, Tedford said and Battista confirmed. But, Tedford noted, that’s on top of the base $15,000 such institutions pay annually to keep his company on retainer.
"Some of these credit unions, the budgets are a little tight to do these tests. That test is not cheap," he said.
That’s partly why plenty of banks and credit unions treat Rentsys and other disaster-recovery service providers like insurance, Tedford said. These financial institutions pay annual costs, inform auditors there is a disaster-recovery plan in place, and that’s pretty much the only contact with the service providers.
"They’re hoping they never have to use us," he told Banker & Tradesman. Still, some credit unions, such as St. Mary’s, or other customers such as Lowell-based Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union and Fairhaven-based First Citizens Credit Union, spring for the full disaster-response preparation drill from time to time.
Battista said it wasn’t prohibitively expensive to run the test, and his institution believes it’s worth it for the peace of mind. Although it’s hard to predict what the situation will be like in the aftermath of a disaster, going through the practice is better than just having a plan on paper.
For the drill, Rentsys brought in the mobile recovery unit, which can be reconfigured to serve the needs of a variety of businesses, Tedford said, including, if necessary, a retail credit union operation. The company parked the unit – which can fit 30 employees – in the parking lot of St. Mary’s One Northborough Road branch in Marlborough, and employees worked out of the unit as they would in the event of a real disaster.
St. Mary’s has five branches, Battista said, so the primary function of the mobile unit would be to keep the back office up and running to support the retail locations. A simple power outage can be handled with generators, but something more substantial will definitely require a more elaborate plan.
