On 31 October 2024, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a new webpage on operational resilience, setting out insights, observations and key lessons from how firms responded to recent outages and their preparedness to respond to future incidents.

The FCA notes that there has been a continued trend of third-party related incidents since the beginning of 2023, and that third-party related issues having been the leading cause of operational incidents reported to the FCA between 2022 and 2023. It says these outages emphasise firms’ increasing dependence on unregulated third parties to deliver important business services, highlighting the importance of firms continuing to become operationally resilient in line with FCA rules.

Firms in scope of policy statement PS21/3 on building operational resilience are reminded that by March 2025, they must ensure they can deliver important business services in severe but plausible scenarios, like recent outages, to help minimise the impact on consumers and markets.

All firms, regardless of how they were affected by recent outages, are encouraged to consider the lessons set out on the new webpage, to improve their ability to respond to and recover from future disruptions.