Harper James advises ambitious UK businesses on the laws of England and Wales, including financial services regulation, commercial contracts, data protection and governance. For a regulated business, operational resilience means keeping important business services within defined limits during disruption, then restoring normal operations in a controlled way.
The FCA and PRA framework requires firms to identify important business services, set impact tolerances, map people, technology, premises and third-party dependencies, and test severe but plausible scenarios. By March 2025, in-scope firms were expected to complete the initial mapping and testing phase. The work now sits within an ongoing cycle of testing, remediation, board oversight and evidence gathering. Read the latest operational resilience guidance before updating your framework.
Regulatory scrutiny is increasingly focused on concentration risk in cloud services, critical outsourcing, cyber incidents, data loss and the use of artificial intelligence in customer or control processes. Businesses operating across the UK and EU also need to distinguish UK requirements from the Digital Operational Resilience Act, which has applied to covered EU financial entities and ICT providers since January 2025. A single group-wide policy does not remove the need to assess each entity's legal duties, contracts and reporting routes.
Start with a service register and name an accountable senior owner for each important business service. Review outsourcing and SaaS agreements for service levels, audit rights, incident notification, subcontracting, data access, exit support and liability caps. Test whether termination rights and data portability work in practice. Then align the business continuity plan, incident response plan, data protection procedures and regulatory notifications. The board should receive a clear record of scenarios tested, weaknesses identified, owners, deadlines and decisions on residual risk. That evidence is as important as the plan itself.
Operational resilience is not a one-off compliance project. Include it in supplier onboarding, product launches, acquisitions, material technology changes and annual contract reviews. Legal, risk, technology, compliance and operations teams should use the same service map and escalation criteria. For a regulated scale-up, a focused review of important business services and critical contracts provides a practical starting point. For a larger organisation, an external legal team can work alongside the General Counsel on regulatory analysis, remediation documents, outsourcing terms and board reporting.