Solutions sought for ‘bank operational resilience’ in latest ‘tech sprint’

Banks’ ability to withstand a major disruption – including natural disasters and cyber attacks – is the focus of a new “tech sprint” announced Monday by the federal insurer of bank deposits.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), in a release, said banks, non-profits, academic institutions, “operational resilience” experts, consumer advocates, and the public at large are invited to participate. The “tech sprint,” the agency said, is intended to be the first of several aimed at how to foster stronger resiliency in banking.

The target for participants, the agency said, is to identify solutions for banks to measure and test their operational resilience to any disruption. The FDIC indicated it hopes to identify the “most helpful set of measures, data, tools, or other capabilities for financial institutions, particularly community banks, to use to determine and to test their operational resilience” against a disruption.

“The U.S. financial sector is facing a growing number of threats to its information technology systems, operations, people, and facilities,” the FDIC said. “From natural disasters to malicious actors, the ability of financial institutions to respond to and recover from these disruptions in a timely, consistent, and reliable manner is essential to the FDIC’s mission.”

Registration for the tech sprint, the agency said, would be announced “in the coming weeks.” Once that is announced, those interested will have two weeks to submit applications to participate. A “select number of teams” will be named (after review of applications) to develop proposed solutions to test operation resilience, the FDIC said.

Teams will be invited to make short demonstrations of their proposals to a panel of expert judges who will evaluate the solutions and select winners; awards will be presented for several categories and will be publicized, the agency said. “The FDIC is not offering monetary prizes associated with this tech sprint,” the agency said.

FDITECH Launches New Sprint to Measure and Test Bank Operational Resiliency