BUSINESS CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT

In banking, staff are required to operate out of a “backup office” for a week each year—a site located far from the main headquarters, designed to take over if something catastrophic happens.

It’s part of Business Continuity Management.

Most hated it—seeing it as wasted office space, idle equipment, and lost time. Preparing for a scenario that feels… unlikely.

Until 2020.

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BCM exists for one purpose: to make sure the institution survives.

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Now bring that into real estate.

In RE brokerage, the risks are just as real.

Millions of pesos worth of transactions… stored in a single laptop.

A laptop that travels everywhere with the broker—coffee shops, beaches, even overseas trips.

What happens if it gets lost? Corrupted?

How many brokers actually have proper backups—cloud + external?

If your laptop disappears today, how long before you’re fully operational again? Can the transaction wait that long?

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What if your brokerage’s bank account gets frozen by the AMLC?

All it takes is one transaction tied—knowingly or unknowingly—to a flagged counterparty.

Suddenly, collections stop. Operations stall.

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The problem with risk is this: You don’t feel it… until you do.

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I have a client who told me insurance didn’t make sense.

“I'd rather invest the money and pay for emergencies myself,” he said.

Then he got hospitalized in Singapore.

3 days. Shared room. Bill: ~Php 4 Mn.

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Even the best in the world prepare for downside.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates reportedly keep a year’s worth of expenses in cash. Not because they expect disaster, but because they refuse to be vulnerable to it.

And their income streams are far more stable than most. Definitely more stable and predictable than brokers.

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So ask yourself:

What should your margin of safety look like?

How much should you keep in your rainy day fund?

Should you have a backup phone/computer?

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A fellow broker told me recently:

“Maybe this slowdown is a good thing. It filters out the industry.”

She might be right.

Because in this business, survival isn’t about who’s busiest during the boom.

It’s about who’s still standing when things go wrong.