Given the widespread importance of operational resilience across the global financial services sector, it is a remarkably new concept from a regulatory perspective. While financial institutions and their supervisors had long been preparing for how firms would respond to unforeseen events that could impact their operations, it was a July 2018 Discussion Paper jointly presented by the UK financial regulatory authorities that formally introduced the term “operational resilience” into the regulatory landscape.

This IIF Staff Paper provides a brief history of the development of operational resilience within the regulatory framework, how the industry has responded, industry observations and lessons learned, and reflections on how the operational resilience framework for the financial services sector might evolve in the future. Finally, the Appendix contains an overview of some of the major policy and regulatory developments by global standard-setting bodies and in jurisdictions across the world since the release of the 2018 UK Discussion Paper.