LONDON, 6 March 2006 – Aon Limited, a leading insurance broker and risk management consultancy, has launched a new pandemic business continuity review service. The service is intended to help businesses assess their readiness for pandemic crises from a human capital resources perspective.
The review service was developed after Aon’s pandemic survey revealed that more than eight in ten business leaders view possible influenza pandemic as a threat to their business, yet fewer than six in ten have put measures in place to protect themselves against such a risk materialising. Attendees at Aon’s recent Pandemic Influenza seminar also voiced a need to review their existing business continuity arrangements against the specific problems a pandemic would present.
Pandemics such as Avian Flu do not represent a traditional business continuity risk since they do not impact a single physical location over a finite-time. The SARS epidemic is the most recent example of a pandemic and challenged the way many organisations think. While the systems were in place to deal with the crisis any organisations found that the relevant people were unavailable to operate them when it hit.
Aon’s pandemic business continuity review helps ensure continuity of operations for a business irrespective of how challenging a pandemic threat proves to be. This is carried out by evaluating the effectiveness of strategies and training already in place, and testing specific incident scenarios.
Alex Hindson, Associate Director at IRMG, a division of Aon, said: “Pandemics represent a special kind of threat to businesses. They affect the most important elements of any organisation – its people. This is why careful business continuity review and planning is needed to make sure they can ride through such crises. Business continuity plans must be robust, tried and tested if they are to have the desired results following a major pandemic.”
Editors note:
Copies of ‘Pandemic Influenza: Managing the Risks of an Invisible Threat’ are available from sally.taylor@aon.co.uk.
About Aon
Aon Corporation (www.aon.com ) is a leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, human capital and management consulting, and specialty insurance underwriting. The company employs approximately 53,000 professionals in its 600 offices in more than 120 countries. Backed by broad resources, industry knowledge and technical expertise, Aon professionals help a wide range of clients develop effective risk management and workforce productivity solutions.
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