As lenders and advice firms increase their use of cloud platforms, open-finance data and AI-enabled customer tools, operational resilience is becoming a front-line issue. The Bank of England’s sector-wide cloud outage simulation highlights the need to prepare for a disruption affecting critical third-party technology, not merely internal systems.
For advisers, resilience planning should cover how client data is protected, how cases can be progressed if a key platform is unavailable, and how customers will be contacted during an outage. AI introduces additional considerations: third-party model dependencies, data-sharing controls, prompt and output records, cyber risk and the possibility of inaccurate automated communications.
- Action: map critical systems and third parties, including AI and cloud providers.
- Action: test manual fallbacks for fact-finds, document storage, lender submissions and customer communications.
- Action: set clear ownership for approving AI tools and responding to technology incidents.