By: Staci Baker It seems like every time I turn on the TV there is another natural disaster. Tsunami in Japan, tornadoes and flooding in the Mid-West United States, earthquakes and forest fires – everywhere; and these disasters are happening worldwide. They are not confined to one location. If a disaster were to happen near any of your offices, would you be prepared? Living in Southern California, this is something I think of often. Especially, since we are supposed to have had “the big one” for the past several years now. When developing a preparedness plan for a company, there are several things to take into consideration. Some are obvious, such as how to keep employees safe, developing steps for IT  to take to ensure data is protected , including an identity theft prevention program, and establishing contingency business plans in case a disaster directly hits your business and doors need to remain closed for several days, weeks, or …. But, what about the non-obvious items that should be included in a disaster preparedness plan? When a natural disaster hits, there is an increase in fraud. So much so, that after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf, the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force, now known as the National Center for Disaster Fraud, was created. In addition to the items listed above, I recommend including the following. Create a plan that will put fraud alerts in place to minimize fraud.  Fraud alerts are not just to notify your clients when there is fraudulent activity on their accounts. Alerts should also be put in place to let you know when there is fraudulent activity within your own business as well. Depending on the type of disaster, delinquency rates may increase, since borrower funds may be diverted to other needs. Implement a disaster collections strategy, which may include modifying credit terms, managing credit risk, and loan loss provisioning. Although these are only a few things to be considered when developing a disaster preparedness plan, I hope it gets you thinking about what your company needs to do to be prepared. What are some things you have already done, or that are on your to do list to prepare your company for the next big event that may affect you?

As breaches increase, breach notifications do too. Breach notification fatigue might put your customers to sleep.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you are undoubtedly aware that the 4G ship has sailed into port. The 4G network is a completely different technology as compared to 3G, the network it is replacing. 3G was fast, but 4G will set the world on fire. It’s kind of like the difference between a farm tractor and a Lamborghini. Rather than just being able to check email and (slowly) surf the net (as with 3G), 4G users will be able to watch live television and rip through online content like nobody’s business. So what does this mean for communications companies? Change device, change carrier? The big question for wireless providers is whether or not customers will change carriers as they upgrade to new, 4G-supported devices. The simple answer is, it depends. Customers who are currently under contract will not likely jump ship for the simple fact that it will cost too much. For example, let’s say I want to upgrade five devices. I can probably buy these less expensively by changing carriers (due to attractive introductory offers). However, if I have to cancel three contracts prior to term end to do it, it may cost me upwards of $1,000—probably more than I can save by changing carriers. For customers who are at the end of a contract term, upgrading to 4G presents a golden opportunity to change providers, if that’s something they’ve been considering. Wireless providers will obviously need to contact these customers well before their contracts are up and make them an offer they simply can’t refuse. Other concerns for wireless providers Obviously, key players in the market have invested a significant amount of money to develop the 4G infrastructure, and sooner or later they’re going to want to recoup those costs. Introductory offers will motivate many to upgrade to 4G, but will all these new/upgrade customers be able to pay the higher monthly bills that will likely come with their new 4G devices? While locking in all these new contracts will positively affect sales quotas, it will be more important than ever to assess these customers’ cash flow situations and credit-worthiness, so they don’t end up negatively affecting the bottom line. Concerns for other telecommunications companies One other interesting aspect to consider is this: With a 4G device, consumers can effectively create their own “hot spot.” So the question is, just as many people are dropping their landlines in favor of wireless, will 4G device users decide to drop their Internet providers? How about their cable television service? I intend to revisit this topic in 3-6 months to see whether early 4G adopters are in fact jumping to different carriers and/or dropping other services. What do you think might happen as 4G becomes the new normal? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.