Payment firms have been warned by the Bank of England that they need to step up their preparations for new 'operational resilience' standards that will come in next year.
The new standards are designed to ensure financial market infrastructure (FMI) firms keep disruption to payment systems to a minimum in the face of events such as cyber attacks or extreme weather.
Ahead of the March 2025 deadline, the BofE expects to see FMIs "accelerating their efforts to ensure that they have calibrated their tolerance for negative impacts on their important business services, and mapped the key people, processes, technology, facilities, and information needed to deliver these services," says Sasha Mills, the Bank's executive director for financial market infrastructure in a speech.
Firms need to start testing their ability to deal with an issue and the Bank "expect to see greater engagement than we have seen thus far between FMIs, their participants, and the wider market," for the calibration of impact tolerances.
Adds Mills: "Another area that still requires significant work is the approach and method FMIs use to test disruption to important business services."