Buddy Up for Safety

What does your firm do if you must evacuate your office for a couple of days or even weeks? One of the best ways to approach this in the short term is to develop a reciprocal arrangement with another advisory firm where you can share resources in the event that a disaster strikes. For example, for some firms that have a greater potential to be evacuated (because of hurricanes, for example), they have identified another firm, perhaps further inland where a storm is less likely to affect them, that can help support their temporary relocation needs. This might be as simple as just using the other firm’s conference room for a couple of days until the displaced firm can get back in their office or find a new location. Be sure to select a firm that uses similar systems as your firm (e.g., portfolio management, contact management, trading, custodian, etc). Of course, you will keep your confidential data separated, but using the systems just helps reduce some of variables in re-establishing your programs.