The Dynamic Scenario Library v1 has now been published. To download this artefact without registering, please click here. 

Remaining within impact tolerances in a severe operational disruption is crucial to avoiding intolerable harm to customers and clients and impacting the safety and soundness of firms and the broader financial stability of the UK Market. Scenario testing using severe but plausible scenarios is critical to enabling firms to understand their ability to remain within Impact Tolerances (ITOLs) during disruption, and to identify remediation activity required to enhance the resilience of their operations. 

The DSL has been developed by CMORG to provide a catalogue of individually described scenarios using a common design methodology and will be regularly refreshed to be reflective of the current threat and risk landscape. Individual firms, authorities and the sector can leverage and localise the scenarios in this library for their own planning and exercising.  

The DSL was documented following collaboration across CMORG member firms and aims to enable greater levels of consistency across the sector through the collective use of a commonly agreed base level scenarios. New scenarios, learnings and improvement opportunities will continue to be identified and implemented as part of a continuous review cycle through Operational Resilience Collaboration Group (ORCG) in coordination with relevant technical groups across third party resilience, cyber, information security and so on. 

The DSL is a collaborative and informative tool to support firms and does not represent a minimum set of scenarios that firms are expected to test against or to remain within Impact Tolerance (ITOL). Firms are still responsible for determining the suitable severe but plausible scenarios that suitably stress their Important Business Services (IBSs) and ITOLs.  

If you have any feedback on the DSL, please email enquiries@cmorg.org.uk  

By Carolyn Gall, The Phoenix Group and Kevin Thorne, HSBC