Covid-19: Fastmarkets’ business continuity successfully activated

Fastmarkets, as a provider of business critical news and price information for the metals, mining, agriculture and forest products industries, is committed to delivering high-quality products and services throughout the Covid-19 crisis.

We have therefore activated our business continuity plan (BCP), as detailed below:

People

  • All Fastmarkets staff in North America, Europe, Latin America and Singapore have been working from home since March 16; in China, our teams are either working remotely or slowly returning to our offices, as per local government guidance;
  • Price assessors and administrators have been implementing a comprehensive cross-training and back-up program enabling colleagues to step in if regular reporters become unavailable;
  • Fastmarkets maintains staffing levels that allow for all roles to have overlapping coverage by one or more employees. We are constantly reviewing the organization for single points of failure and taking corrective actions.

Systems and processes

  • All Fastmarkets data relating to the assessment of prices and indices is stored in a cloud-based environment and is backed up regularly on two different secure databases;
  • Our pricing database is fully accessible remotely, enabling reporters to have all the pricing tools they need to continue to deliver high-quality prices;
  • In exceptional circumstances, such as an unusual number of assessors becoming unable to work due to Covid-19, we reserve the right to:
    • Relax our three-step price publication process to a two-step process with a second pair of eyes still reviewing each price prior to publication,
    • Or, in a worst-case scenario, roll prices until the next publication date.

Health and safety

  • With the health and wellbeing of its staff at heart, Fastmarkets has closed its 14 offices in Europe and the Americas effective March 20. In Asia we have shut our Singapore office but have kept our Shanghai and Beijing offices open, in line with Chinese government guidance.
  • Non-essential travel has been banned.

As the pandemic progresses, we will continue to review our policies and procedures on a regular basis, and we will adapt them as necessary. We will ensure we comply with government directives and the advice of health agencies in the countries in which we operate, and we endeavor to keep our users and customers informed during this challenging time.

Best wishes,
Raju Daswani, CEO