About Us
The professional approach
Continuity Group Asia was founded in 2015 to organize seminars, conferences and training courses, and to provide consultancy services in the area of Resilience, Crisis Management and Business Continuity Management (BCM).
Who Are We
A team of leading specialists in Resilience, Crisis Management and Business Continuity Management.
- Each of our trainers and consultants brings multiple decades of experience, covering a wide range of industries.
- We understand what a crisis can do to your organisation.
Our Mission
Making the world more agile and robust.
- Helping your organisation to be prepared for the unexpected.
- Contribute and develop Resilience, BC and CM expertise, by organizing certifying training courses, seminars and conferences.
What We Do
We help organizations prepare for unexpected events with:
- Resilience framework: create organizational agility in a concerted approach to ORM, IT-Sec, BCM and VRM.
- Crisis Management: The corporate response for when incidents go beyond what was planned for
- Business Continuity Management: prepare plans and solutions to deal with interruptions
- Share expertise: Lectures, peer-group meetings and annual conference of BC professionals
- Professional BC training
Our history
Our founder is Willem A. Hoekstra M MBA FBCI CISM, who has been a leader in Resilience, Business Continuity Management (BCM), and Crisis Management, primarily within the financial industry for over 25 years. His career spans global financial hubs, including Amsterdam, Singapore, and Hong Kong, with senior roles at ABN AMRO (10 years), Société Générale (3 years), and Nomura (7 years).
More recently, Willem established BCM programs for a major hospitality and gaming group in Macau before transitioning to full-time consulting in 2020. As a consultant, he has advised top management across a diverse range of industries, including banking, insurance, financial services, global airlines, hospitality, and manufacturing. His expertise in resilience strategy has helped organizations strengthen their preparedness against disruptions.
Throughout his career, Willem has managed numerous crisis incidents, including the 9/11 attacks, the Mumbai bombings, infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, large-scale protests, extreme typhoons, and the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. Additionally, he has tackled complex in-house disruptions, such as global trading floor flooding, data center outages, and cyberattacks.
Recognized as a thought leader, Willem has spoken at various international conferences and seminars on resilience, business continuity, and crisis management. He played a pivotal role in the Hong Kong Financial Services Business Continuity Management (HKFSBCM) Forum, serving as chairman and driving force behind WISE2015 and WISE2017, the first industry-wide crisis management exercises for Hong Kong’s financial sector.
After years of leadership as Chapter Leader of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Hong Kong, Willem now serves as a Global Director on the Board of the BCI.
Why choose us?
All of our consultants have earned their stripes with multiple decades of industry experience.
We like to impress with quality instead of quantity. No one likes to read a 100+ page document, especially during a crisis. Let’s make pragmatic solutions that actually work.
We understand that every organisation is different, with different priorities and needs. No one-size-fits-all approach.
We are proud that our founder was awarded with a BCM Personality of the year award by the BCI, for lifetime achievements, already back in 2013.
Your time and money is precious. We’ll make your BCM project as efficient yet effective as possible. It will be visibly and measurable worth your while!
Although we have in-depth knowledge of GPG, ISO as well as authority-issued standards, we also know how to translate these into a useful solution for you.
Would you like to start a project with us?
Call us now, or send us a message and we'll be happy to discuss how we can help you.
Meet the team
Who we've worked with
Publications
- Hoekstra, W.A.:“Embedding BCM into Business Culture – an Asian perspective”, chapter 9 in: “Fundamentals of BCM” Bird, L. ed. (Incisive Media 2014)
- Hoekstra, W.A.: “Be prepared! Planning for the unexpected”, in: ’A’A’ / L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Jul 2010, #378.
- Hoekstra, W.A.: “Clear and present Danger: How business continuity management can prove to be a competitive advantage”, in: CXO Magazine issue 8, Jan 2008.
- Hoekstra, W.A.: “Industry Q&A – Willem Hoekstra considers the evolution of Business Continuity planning and explains how an effective BCM strategy can be used to generate real value.” In: BCI Continuity Magazine, Jan 2008.
Presentations, seminars and other
Willem Hoekstra has contributed as expert speaker on BCM at many international conferences, including:
Expert speaker on BCM at international conferences:
- BCI Education week webinar (2019)
- Asia Risk & Resilience Conference, Singapore (2016, 2018, 2019)
- Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (2019)
- Zenith Bizness Conference Kuala Lumpur (2019)
- RHB BCM meeting, Kuala Lumpur (2019)
- French Macau Chamber of Commerce FMCC (2018)
- OpRisk Conference Singapore (2018)
- Securitex Hong Kong (2018)
- BCI World Conference & Exhibition London (2017)
- BCI Seminars Hong Kong (2017, 2018)
- Hong Kong Business Continuity Conference HKBCC (2016, 2017, 2018)
- OSAC meeting, American embassy Hong Kong (201?)
- GRCCS BCI Conference KL Malaysia (2017)
- IOSCO global meeting, hosted by HK-SFC, Hong Kong (2016)
- Asia Emergency Management Conference Macau (2016 )
- BCI Conference Hong Kong (2016)
- Marcus Evans Annual Operational Risk Conference, Singapore (2013, 2014, 2015)
- BCM-I World Continuity Congress, Bali Indonesia (2013), Manila Philippines (2014), Singapore (2011,
2014), Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (2010) - BCI Asia Business Continuity Seminar, Hong Kong (2013, 2015), Malacca Malaysia (2013), Kuala Lumpur
(2015) - The OpRisk Practice, Singapore (2013)
- Incisive Events, Operational Risk Asia Conference Singapore (2013, 2015)
- Asian Securitex Conference 2012, Hong Kong (2012)
- Asia Crisis & Security Group ACSG, Hong Kong (2011)
- Marcus Evans CRO summit, Heiligendamm Germany (2008)
- BCI annual Conference seminar, Amsterdam Netherlands. Key-note speaker. (2007)
- Heliview & BCI conference on BCM, Utrecht Netherlands, (2007)
- Marcus Evans BCM Conference Berlin (2006) , Frankfurt (2005), Amsterdam (2004)
- Global Benchmarking Group annual conference on BCM, Barcelona Spain. (1995 & 1996)
- International conference on Homeland Security conference, Brussels Belgium, (2006)
Non-speaker attendance of various BCM conferences, including:
- BCI Global symposium, Brighton, UK (2008)
- BCI BCM conference, Singapore (2007, 2008, 2011, 2015)
- ICT summit, Marcus Evans, Montreux, Switzerland (2007)
- Seminar on Security – South African embassy, The Hague, Netherlands (2006)
- Seminar on Corporate Security, KPMG, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2006)
- Seminar on BCM, KPMG, London (2006)
- BCI Expo, London, (2005, 2006)