Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Hennion & Walsh has in place a Business Continuity Plan (The Plan) designed to help us respond to events that might significantly disrupt our business. The plan’s flexibility allows us to respond to various scenarios.
Contacting the Firm
If you are unable to contact us by telephone at (800) 836-8240 you should try our alternate number (973) 257-9395 or go to our website www.hennionandwalsh.com for further instructions.
Our Plan
The plan should allow us to quickly recover from any disruption and resume business operations. The Plan addresses employee safety, protection of property, and safeguarding customer information. It outlines steps to be taken to allow customers’ to transact business. In short, it is a guideline to permit us to resume normal operations as quickly as possible.
The Plan also addresses: data back up and recover; all mission critical systems; financial and operational assessments; alternative communications with customers, employees, and regulators; alternate physical location of employees; critical supplier, contractor, bank and counter-party impact, regulatory reporting; and assuring our customers prompt access to their funds and securities and steps taken if we are unable to continue our business.
Our clearing firm, First Clearing Corporation, backs up our important records in geographically separate locations. While every emergency situation poses unique problems based on external factors, such as time of day and severity of the disruption. First Clearing, LLC has a through Business Continuity Plan in place. First Clearing has advised us that its objective is to restore its own operations and be able to complete existing transactions and accept new transactions and payments in a timely manner.
Disruptions
Significant business disruptions can vary in their scope. If the disruption involves a local situation affecting only our firm; we anticipate that we would resume operations within 4 hours. With a regional or statewide disruption we anticipate it may take 8 hours to resume operations. In either situation, we plan to continue doing business by transferring operations to our clearing firm, as necessary, and notifying you of our status through our web site www.hennionandwalsh.com.
As a client of Hennion & Walsh we recognize you may need to access to your account to sell a position or request a check before we can reestablish telephone or other communication services with you. During this time, our clearing firm will assist you with sell or liquidation orders and provide check disbursements, as required. If you cannot contact our firm by any means, please call First Clearing, LLC for assistance at (877) 496-3223.
For more information
If you have questions about our business continuity planning, you can contact Phillip Fitzsimmons, Chief Compliance Officer at (800) 836-8240.