Every organisation has a resilience picture. Very few have the complete one.
The UK financial services sector operates under intensifying regulatory scrutiny. With over 300 banks and around 400 insurers – representing £10 trillion in banking assets and £220bn in annual premiums – the UK is one of the world’s most complex financial ecosystems.
Regulators now expect firms to demonstrate operational resilience in practice. Institutions must identify Important Business Services, define impact tolerances, and prove - through mapping and testing - that critical services can withstand disruption.
UK banks are projected to spend over £2.5bn annually on resilience and compliance through 2026. Regulators expect evidence. Boards expect assurance.
Operational resilience must now be visible, measurable and defensible. And for the people who carry that responsibility - the pressure is real, long before any regulatory deadline.
Most disruptions aren't surprises. They're structures that were always there - just never surfaced. Can you see yours?
Insight Report: Resilience Made Visible
Behind every resilience failure is something that was knowable – a dependency missed, a tolerance untested, a gap between policy and reality. This report surfaces what most reviews leave hidden.
This insight report examines the evolving regulatory landscape and outlines a structured approach to strengthening operational resilience across critical services and technology estates. Aligned to FCA, PRA and DORA expectations, it provides practical guidance for making resilience measurable, demonstrable and defensible.
Uncover the unseen in the full insight guideWhat you can’t see is already a risk
Yet beneath the surface of every critical service – payments, portfolios, underwriting, claims – lies a web of technology, data, cyber controls and third-party dependencies. When one thread breaks, the effect rarely stays contained. Each layer below is both a vulnerability and a pathway for disruption to travel:
- Important Business Services that must remain within impact tolerances – the point where disruption first becomes visible to regulators
- Third-party and ICT dependencies that extend the chain of risk far beyond your own walls
- Resource dependencies across technology, data and suppliers that connect one failure to the next
- Disruption scenarios that test whether tolerances hold – or reveal where the cascade breaks through
- Board-level accountability that sits at the end of that chain – where the consequences of every hidden gap ultimately arrive
Scanning beneath the surface
Fujitsu scans beneath the surface of your organisation - mapping the structures, signals and dependencies that shape how resilience holds when pressure arrives. Because disruption rarely begins where it ends.
Human-Centred Resilience
- A shared operational view that brings risk, technology and business teams to the same picture
- Decision-ready insights for resilience leaders – surfaced clearly, not buried in dashboards
- Practical frameworks designed for how organisations actually operate – not how their documentation suggests they should
- Tools that support collaboration across the functions that carry resilience responsibility
The leaders who carry resilience responsibility need more than frameworks. They need clarity.
Dependency Transparency
- Mapping of the technology, data and supplier resources your critical services depend on – made visible, not assumed
- Visibility of third- and fourth-party dependencies – including the layers most organisations have never fully traced
- Structured oversight of ICT and concentration risk – brought into focus rather than left at the edge of the map
- Identification of single points of failure – before they surface somewhere else
Because you can’t manage what you haven’t seen.
Governance-Level Control
- Independent review of resilience posture – unfiltered by internal assumptions about what the picture looks like
- A clear view of the gap between what policy describes and what operations can actually sustain under pressure
- A prioritised remediation roadmap that shows where the vulnerabilities lie and where to act first
- Executive-level reporting that surfaces the right information for board accountability – before the regulator asks for it
The surface view is rarely the whole picture.
Regulator-Aligned Assurance
- Identification and mapping of Important Business Services
- Validation of impact tolerances through structured testing – examining how stress in one layer travels across the rest
- Evidence-ready artefacts aligned to FCA, PRA and DORA – structured for scrutiny before it arrives
- Governance reporting supporting board and regulatory assurance
Resilience that can be shown – not just stated.
The Fujitsu Operational Resilience Framework
How we make resilience visible
Operational resilience cannot be managed in isolation – it must be understood as a system. At the centre are critical business services – the services regulators, boards and customers rely on most. But the vulnerabilities that threaten them are rarely found there. They live in the layers beneath.
Developed through extensive engagement with financial institutions facing growing regulatory and operational complexity, the Fujitsu Operational Resilience Framework provides a clear view of how critical services depend on interconnected technology, data, people and suppliers.
The framework turns operational complexity into a visible, structured view of resilience across the organisation, mapping resilience across five domains:
- Technology: Infrastructure and systems supporting critical services
- Data: Availability, integrity and recoverability of information
- Cyber & Information Security: Protection and response to evolving threats
- People & Skills: Teams and expertise required to sustain services
- Supply Chain & Ecosystem: Dependencies across cloud providers and partners
By connecting these domains, the framework traces how disruption in one layer cascades into the next – exposing concentration risk, single points of failure, and the gap between what compliance documents describe and what operations can actually sustain.
Because what isn’t visible can’t be managed. And what can’t be managed will eventually surface – on your terms, or someone else’s.
Explore the Operational Resilience FrameworkThe European Tech Leader's Breakthrough Moment
Seizing the shift: disruption, technology and leadership
In one of the world’s most regulated and interconnected markets, technology leaders in UK banking and insurance face a unique convergence of pressures – escalating cyber threats, regulatory scrutiny, legacy modernisation and rising expectations from boards and customers alike.
Drawing on research with 1,750 technology leaders across eight European markets, this UK Financial Services edition highlights the sector-specific insights shaping technology leadership in banking and insurance – and how leaders are strengthening resilience while driving transformation in a demanding environment.
Fujitsu surfaces what your organisation can’t see on its own – and builds the evidence to act on it.
Download the report to explore the breakthrough moments shaping technology leadership in UK financial servicesFrom Visibility to Action
When resilience becomes visible, it becomes measurable.
When it becomes measurable, it becomes defensible.
Request an independent Operational Resilience Review. We’ll show you what’s beneath the surface – and what to do about it. So, you can lead with confidence, not just compliance.