Busines Continuity & Incident Response Templates

Editable starting-point templates for building or improving your business continuity and incident response programs. Designed for community banks and credit unions that need documented plans without the cost of enterprise business continuity software — free to download, no account required. More documents coming soon!

Important — Please Read Before Downloading

These are draft templates only. They are provided as a starting point to assist your institution in developing its own disaster recovery and incident response program and do not constitute legal or regulatory advice. No guarantee of regulatory acceptance, examiner approval, or compliance is expressed or implied. Disaster recovery and business continuity requirements vary by institution size, complexity, and the specific guidance applicable to your charter type — including FFIEC BCP booklet expectations and NCUA guidance that continue to evolve. Your institution is solely responsible for reviewing, testing, and adapting these templates to reflect your actual systems, personnel, facilities, and recovery objectives. Plans that have not been tested are of limited value — regulators expect documented evidence of testing and results. CU Risk Advisors recommends that completed plans be reviewed by qualified legal counsel or a compliance professional before reliance in an examination context.

A defensible starting point

A documented plan — even one under development — demonstrates due diligence. These templates give you a structured foundation that shows examiners your institution takes disaster recovery seriously.

Structured for your environment

Templates are pre-organized around the components regulators look for — recovery objectives, critical systems, contact trees, testing schedules — so you can focus on filling in your institution’s specifics.

Built for community institutions

Right-sized for $5M–$500M institutions operating without enterprise BCP software. Not over-engineered for a large bank — and not so minimal they fail to satisfy examiner expectations.

Fully editable Word and Excel formats

Templates are delivered as Microsoft Word documents and Excel workbooks depending on their purpose. Fully editable — add your systems inventory, contact information, recovery time objectives, and test results.

How to use these templates

1

Download the template for the DR or incident response function you need — no account or payment required.

2

Customize it — add your systems inventory, critical vendor contacts, recovery time objectives, and personnel contact trees specific to your institution.

3

Review and test the completed plan with your IT staff, senior management, and board. Regulators expect documented evidence of testing — not just a plan on a shelf.

4

Maintain and retest — DR and incident response plans must be reviewed and tested at least annually and updated whenever systems, personnel, or facilities change significantly.

Free Download

All templates are free to download and use. If a template saved you time or helped your institution, please consider supporting CU Risk Advisors — a voluntary contribution helps us continue developing free tools for the community banking industry. Each template also includes a Support tab with contribution options.