Implementation monitoring of PFMI: Level 3 assessment of FMIs' business continuity planning

CPMI Papers  |  No 197  | 
21 July 2021

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) continue to closely monitor the implementation of the Principles for financial market infrastructures (PFMI). The PFMI are international standards for payment, clearing and settlement systems, and trade repositories (together, financial market infrastructures (FMIs)). The PFMI are designed to ensure that the infrastructure supporting global financial markets is robust and well placed to withstand financial shocks.

This report reviews business continuity planning at a sample of 38 FMIs from 29 jurisdictions. The findings show that some FMIs do not fully meet expectations with respect to recovery from an operational incidents, such as natural disasters or IT systems outage. In particular, the business continuity management of some, and potentially many, FMIs do not seem to aim to resume operations in a timely way, including in the event of a wide-scale or major disruption. This is a serious concern, and the CPMI and IOSCO urge the relevant FMIs and their supervisors to take action as a matter of the highest priority.