Get your house in order

On Thursday August 14 this year, the lights went out across the northeast US and the Canadian province of Ontario, in the worst ever power failure in North American history.

Trading volumes suffered the following day, as managers could not get into work and a number of firms and electronic communication networks remained affected throughout the day. Barely a week later, on August 20, all trading at the New Zealand Stock Exchange was suspended, after a software malfunction meant it was unable to confirm that transfers of shares were being recorded. Both incidents remind us why operational risk, defined as "the risk of direct or indirect loss resulting from inadequate