Spending by financial institutions on business continuity planning and disaster recovery products and services is expected to grow by 45% in two years, from $2.2bn (€2.05bn) in 2003 to $3.2bn in 2005.

Datamonitor, the UK research firm, said that the threat of terrorism has triggered awareness at a board level of the need to invest in such services, to take account of the operational risk of failure due to a terrorist attack. Financial institutions were ahead of other sectors, such as healthcare, government and corporates in their spending plans.