The Bank of England has tested the UK financial sector’s resilience to major operational disruption in a two-day simulation exercise.

The bank worked alongside the financial sector and UK financial authorities HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to carry out the simulation.

“It is important to prepare our response to any widespread incident,” said Sam Woods, deputy governor of prudential regulation and chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority. “The financial authorities and industry working together to rehearse our response is a vital part of this.”

The test involved 50 regulated firms as well as the two financial watchdogs.

The central bank said that the trial will help firms and regulators identify improvements to the “collective response capabilities, improving the resilience of the financial sector as a whole, and promoting a stable financial system that the public can depend on”.

“A resilient financial services sector is crucial in a modern economy and a continual focus for the banking and finance industry,” said David Postings, chief executive of UK Finance. “The sector-wide exercise this week will help ensure our collective response to any potential incident is robust, protecting the UK’s financial system, institutions and customers.”

The latest exercise, which follows a similar simulation that took place in 2018,has been developed by the Cross Market Operational Resilience Group (CMORG), a joint initiative between the financial authorities, UK Finance and industry.

Share Story: