On 9 April 2021, the Central Bank of Ireland (Central Bank) published its most recent consultation paper, titled, "Cross Industry Guidance on Operation Resilience (CP – 140)" (Paper).
The Paper seeks stakeholders' views across the financial services sector on the proposed new cross industry guidance on operational resilience (Guidance). The Guidance aims to address existing vulnerabilities and weaknesses within the sector and how best to insulate the sector against any future events or crisis.
The proposal is that the new Guidance will apply to all regulated financial service providers, as defined in section 2 of the Central Bank Act 1942. The Central Bank expects that once the Guidance is published, regulated firms should be able to demonstrate the application of the Guidance within an appropriate timeframe.
The Central Bank created the Paper to consider the responses received by it arising out of the Operational Resilience Maturity Assessment (Assessment), which the Central Bank conducted in Q4 2020 across a sample of the sector. The Assessment, according to the Central Bank, has highlighted the need to further build on business continuity management and to take an end-to-end business services approach to operational resilience through 15 separate guidelines it has enumerated under the following three pillars:
- Pillar 1 – Identify and Prepare
- Pillar 2 – Respond and Adapt
- Pillar 3 – Recover and Learn
The Central Bank is seeking all views to be submitted by 9 July 2021, through its provided feedback template forms, which can be accessed here along with the Paper itself.
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