Achieving and maintaining operational resilience

Operational resilience has been high on the international and UK regulatory agenda for some time and remains an area of strong focus due to significant issues experienced by financial services firms which include IT outages, cyberattacks, failings in relation to outsourcing arrangements and all sorts of physical events. Additionally, the Covid-19 crisis puts banks in front of one of the most severe real-life stress that have not been envisaged before. The pandemic has posed tremendous challenges confirming how important it is to be operationally resilient.

Firms should assume that failures are inevitable. Looking from a point when a risk crystallises, and not only assessing and mitigating its likelihood, is the key perspective Operational Resilience brings in.

Although operational resilience is not a new concept in the UK regulation, the regulators have clarified their expectations and their approach based two new notions: Importance Business Services (‘IBS’) and Impact Tolerance. Therefore, existing processes, data and reporting framework must be augmented to address those concepts.

Operational resilience considerations must become an iterative and ongoing process. Any strategy change, new product, business volume increase will need to be identified and embedded into operational resilience considerations going forward.

Contingency should be defined so that services are restored, even in an altered manner, within agreed tolerance. All resources, including third parties, required to deliver an IBS must be operationally resilient.

How we can help?

Assist and support you in developing and implementing an operational resilience framework by leveraging as much as possible on the existing set up.
Review the methodology used to identify IBS, set impact tolerances, map critical processes and systems, build the operational resilience governance framework, including management information and SMF responsibilities.
Train your teams to increase awareness around operational resilience considerations.

Get in touch

For more information on how we can help, please contact us.

National contacts

Gregory Marchat Partner, Group head of financial services advisory London

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