Aldbury International was approached by a financial services firm following an FCA review of its Operational Resilience Self-Assessment. 

In the world of Operational Resilience, failure isn’t something to avoid - it’s something to learn from. This article explores why regulators such as the FCA and PRA expect firms to test beyond the point of failure, how effective crisis management teams respond under pressure, and why true resilience is built through challenge, not comfort.

Running scenario testing under the UK’s Operational Resilience framework is challenging. Designing severe, plausible and meaningful scenarios is not straightforward and can be a daunting prospect for firms both caught within the framework and the many more outside it who want to be seen to be doing the right thing.