On 5 March 2019, the Bank of England (BoE) published the annual cyclical scenario (ACS) that it will be stress testing banks against in 2019. The ACS will test the resilience of the UK banking system to deep simultaneous recessions in the UK and global economies, a financial market stress, and an independent stress of misconduct costs.

Reflecting the Financial Policy Committee’s assessment that the underlying vulnerabilities are broadly unchanged on the year, the stress-test scenario is very close to that in the 018 ACS. As such, it remains tougher than the financial crisis.

The results of the 2019 ACS will be published in 2019, along with the BoE’s Financial Stability Report.