SIMEX 22 – A two-day market wide simulation exercise to test the UK financial sector’s resilience to a major operational disruption

Published on 18 November 2022

News release

The Bank of England, in partnership with the financial sector and the UK financial authorities (HM Treasury and Financial Conduct Authority), has undertaken a two-day UK market wide simulation exercise, SIMEX 22. The simulation set out to test the UK financial sector’s resilience to major operational disruption.

Building on the success of SIMEX 2018, SIMEX22 involved 50 regulated firms as well as the financial authorities. SIMEX22 will help both the financial authorities and firms 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.

Sam Woods Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation and CEO of the Prudential Regulation Authority said:

“It is important to prepare our response to any widespread incident. The financial authorities and industry working together to rehearse our response is a vital part of this.”

David Postings, Chief Executive of UK Finance, said:

“A resilient financial services sector is crucial in a modern economy and a continual focus for the banking and finance industry. 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 exercise has been developed by the Cross Market Operational Resilience Group (CMORG), a joint initiative between the financial authorities, UK Finance and industry. The initiative aims to improve the resilience of the UK financial sector through collective action. CMORG achieves this through the identification and creation of guidance and resilience capabilities that address potential systemic risks in the sector. CMORG will consider the findings and ensure that collective capabilities are developed to mitigate any risks that are identified.