The Bank of England expects firms to strengthen their resilience and crisis response following a sector-wide simulation of a global cloud services disruption. The exercise involved 38 of the largest and most systemically important banks and market infrastructure operators, working alongside financial authorities.
The Cross-Market Operational Resilience Group (CMORG) completed the exercise, SIMEX26, on 8 October. The group runs the simulation every two years and is chaired by the Bank and UK Finance, with participation from HM Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the wider financial sector.
Hosted by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and opened by Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby, the exercise focused on how firms and authorities would respond to global disruption affecting cloud-based services. The scenario was developed with industry experts and did not reflect any specific threat information.
SIMEX26 included a live meeting of the Bank-chaired Cross Market Business Continuity Group, which provides strategic direction for the sector’s collective response to systemic incidents. The Bank said it now expects firms to act on the exercise to strengthen their ability to respond to severe operational and cyber scenarios.
The simulation exercised the Sector Response Framework, through which CMORG oversees the sector-wide response to systemic incidents. The framework supports a coordinated response to severe disruption across UK financial services.
Katharine Braddick, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation at the Bank and chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said: “The level of collaboration reflects the priority firms place on maintaining critical services in the face of disruption. That preparedness is essential to safeguarding financial stability.”
The SIMEX programme rehearses responses to challenging disruption scenarios. Previous exercises in 2022 and 2024 considered cyber-attacks against a major bank and disruption to critical infrastructure outside the financial sector.
CMORG’s wider programme identifies systemic risks, develops sector-wide mitigation strategies and shares capabilities and knowledge across financial services, supported by specialist industry groups.
Recent work by the Bank, financial authorities and industry through CMORG has included strengthening third-party engagement and resilience, enabling secure innovation in response to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and enhancing cyber preparedness, response and recovery for the most severe disruption scenarios.
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