Major projects and events 2008
Market Wide Exercise Rescheduled
The Tripartite Authorities have decided to reschedule the market wide business continuity exercise to 2009 on the 17th & 25th November so that firms can devote the appropriate resources to participation. The 75 participating organisations, relevant supervisors and other stakeholders have all been informed. The exercise team will press on to complete, on schedule, the design, of what is looking like another very promising exercise.
Further information about the exercise will be published on the Financial Sector Continuity Website as it becomes available.
If you wish to participate in this year's exercise please email the exercise Project Office.
Resilience Benchmarking Project
The Resilience Benchmarking Project was designed to assess the resilience and recovery capability of the UK financial sector in the event of major operational disruption, identify areas for improvement, and determine what needed to be done to strengthen our collective resilience.
This was first conducted in 2005, and following positive responses from the industry, was repeated in 2008. The 2008 Benchmarking Project gave us the opportunity to measure the extent to which the issues identified in 2005 have been addressed (both individually and collectively) and to explore any new issues that have emerged in the meantime.
This will enable the Tripartite Authorities to prioritise future work most effectively and to focus their resources on those issues that are proving most challenging to address. The findings of the 2008 Benchmarking Project are set out in a discussion paper which was published in June 2008.
Nearly 60 of the UK's most significant firms and infrastructure providers took part in this year's survey. Several firms demonstrated considerable improvements in areas of weakness identified in 2005, whilst most individual participants were able to demonstrate an overall improvement. This is encouraging, and suggests that the Benchmarking Project has been a catalyst for improvement in the industry's business continuity and crisis preparedness arrangements through increased awareness of the issues.
We do not intend to repeat the formal resilience benchmarking project for another 3 years. In the meantime we propose to make the benchmarking tool available to firms on a self-assessment basis so that participants can continue to measure their progress on an ongoing basis.
Further information on both the 2008 and 2005 benchmarking projects can be found on the Tripartite Financial Sector Continuity website.
Information needed on firms in a financial crisis: ‘Factbooks’
Since January 2007, we have had in place a platform to support the secure submission and collation of the additional data from firms. During 2008 we are continuing to develop and expand the use of Factbooks to ensure that key information on all Factbook firms can be accessed rapidly, securely and in an appropriate format by the Tripartite authorities.
Major projects and events 2007
Seminar for participants in the 2006 Market-Wide Exercise
The seminar took place on Monday 23rd April and was attended by around 150 delegates from across the financial sector. Guest speakers included representatives from telecoms, energy, recovery site providers, US regulators and the UK financial sector.
Seminar for non-participants in the 2006 Market-Wide Exercise
The seminar took place on Thursday 19th July and over 120 delegates attended. The lessons learned from the last Market-Wide Exercise, about the business response to a pandemic, were shared with attendees. Delegates welcomed the opportunity to learn from the experience of others and discuss the challenges they face as they develop their pandemic plans. Guest speakers included representatives from the telecoms, health and financial sectors.
Further information on both these seminars can be found on the Financial Sector Continuity Website:
Tripartite Business Continuity Conference
This year’s conference was held at HM Treasury on Tuesday 3rd July. The key theme was preparation for pandemic flu and the implementation of lessons learned since the 2006 Market-Wide Exercise. Speakers included representatives from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the Department of Health, representatives from industry and financial sector infrastructure providers.
Major projects and events 2006
Tripartite Authorities Market Wide-Exercise 2006
The Tripartite Authorities have published a report on the Financial Sector Market-Wide Exercise which ran for six weeks from 13 October to 24 November during which 70 participants responded to the first wave of an influenza pandemic.
Market Wide Exercise 2006 Executive summary [PDF]
The third annual Tripartite Market-Wide Exercise came to a successful conclusion on 24 November following a six week exercise that simulated the first wave of a global flu’ pandemic.
The main objectives of the exercise were: to explore and better understand the potential impact of a flu pandemic on the financial sector; and to improve the sector’s preparedness by providing an opportunity to firms to review, test and update their response plans. The challenge for the financial sector was to maintain, as far as possible, a stable operational environment during a prolonged period of interruption to business.
Feedback from the firms that took part has been overwhelmingly favourable; the exercise scenario was seen as authoritative, stimulating and thought provoking. Based on that feedback the Tripartite Authorities are confident the exercise objectives were met and that their programme of market-wide exercises continues to make an effective contribution to strengthening the resilience of the financial sector to major operational disruption.
Further information can be found on the Tripartite Financial Sector Continuity website.
Information needed on firms in a financial crisis: ‘Factbooks’
The FSA is leading a Tripartite project – with the Bank of England and HM Treasury – to seek to ensure that the information that we are most likely to need, quickly, on a stricken firm (or a firm affected or potentially affected by a crisis) is available.
On 17 October 2005 we published a paper entitled Information needed on firms in a financial crisis: ‘Factbooks’ summarising our proposals.
On 1 June 2006, following responses received to the original proposals and further consultation with interested parties, we published an update paper, setting out our revised ideas.
We intend to implement the additional data arrangements on a phased basis starting in the fourth quarter of 2006 and we are developing a platform to support the secure submission and collation of this additional data.
Major projects and events 2005
Market-Wide Exercise 28 November 2005
On 28 November 2005, the UK staged the world’s largest business continuity simulation exercise ever conducted in the financial markets. The exercise was led by the Tripartite Authorities – the Financial services Authority, the Bank of England and HM Treasury.
It was the third in a series of annual exercises and forms part of the world leading programme to strengthen arrangements for managing major operational disruption and promote effective business continuity practice across the financial sector. Well over 3,000 people and 70 organisations took part in the sophisticated simulation of a major disruption to test market-wide coordination, response, communications and decision making.
KPMG, which led the detailed planning and preparation on behalf of the Tripartite Authorities, has obtained and analysed feedback from those who took part. Their findings are summarised in a report. The report provides an analysis of key events as the exercise progressed and summarises some of the detailed feedback received from organisations which the Tripartite Authorities will take into account in planning future exercises.
Financial crisis management exercise – Oct 2005
The 2005/6 Business Plan highlighted the planned 2005 Tripartite financial crisis management exercise – which took place in October 2005. Participation in this exercise reflects the Tripartite authorities continued commitment to improve their arrangements for financial crisis management, and builds on the findings and conclusions of previous exercises and historical events. Real financial crisis are (thankfully) rare. By developing and running exercises of this nature we are provided with a good mechanism for testing the crisis management arrangements of the authorities using a simulated “crisis” event.
FSA half-day conference on stress-testing on 27 September 2005
As the latest step in our themed work on stress-testing following the issue of DP 05/02 in May, on 27 September the FSA hosted a half-day conference for senior management and risk managers of the larger firms on stress-testing, with a number of presentations and break-out sessions.