On 9 December 2025, the Bank of England (BoE) published the results of its 2025 stress test (the Stress Test) of central counterparties (CCPs).

Background

The BoE set out that its regular stress testing of CCPs aims to identify any potential vulnerabilities and gaps in their financial resilience, with the findings used to inform the BoE’s ongoing supervision of CCPs.

Overview

The BoE highlighted the results of the Stress Test, key points included:

  • Core Credit Stress Test: The BoE found that all UK CCPs have adequate pre-funded resources to cover a severe stress scenario which includes the default of the ‘Cover-2’ members – the two members whose default generates the greatest depletion of mutualised resources at the CCP.
    • The BoE also found that the impact on CCP resources this year is lower than observed in 2024, but overall higher than in 2023. The BoE explained that it considers that the difference in outcomes compared to 2024 reflects the shape of the scenario this year, which this year is generally more broad-based across products, whereas last year’s scenario included shocks to some key products that went beyond historical worsts.
    • When the additional costs of liquidating concentrated positions are added, the BoE also found that CCPs are still able to absorb these additional losses within pre-funded resources.
  • Exploratory internal analysis of CCP resilience: The BoE explained that this analysis is conducted against a much larger set of scenarios developed by the BoE compared to the the core credit stress test. As a result, this gives the BoE more insight into the impact of a specific scenario and considers a larger set of extreme but plausible scenarios. The BoE set out that it found that only a small fraction of these scenarios lead to use of non-defaulter resources and fewer than 10 exhaust the pre-funded resources held at any UK CCP and concludes that these scenarios tend to sit well beyond historical worsts, such that this analysis gives the BoE confidence that CCPs’ resources are sized appropriately.

Next steps

The BoE explained that it will use the findings from the 2025 CCP Stress Test to support and inform its ongoing supervision and regulation of UK CCPs and will also share relevant results with other regulators and authorities.

The BoE also set out that it will not be conducting a full public stress test of UK CCPs in 2026 but plans to build on work done this year and continue to develop its internal stress testing tools to support our objective of conducting more dynamic and efficient testing of a wider range of risks and scenarios. As a result, the BoE made clear that the next public exercise will instead take place in 2027.