Operational resilience in financial services is more than policies on paper. Organisations may assume their third-party providers are stable, compliant, and prepared for disruption, but assumptions alone cannot ensure control.
Our 2025 whitepaper, Supplier Stability in Operational Resilience: Follow-Up Insights and Analysis, highlights a recurring theme: confidence is valuable, but without verification, it can mask vulnerabilities. Across the survey, organisations that had not requested proof from their Cloud or SaaS providers reported 0% high confidence in their stressed exit plans, compared to 38% among those that had verified arrangements.
Verification is more than a checkbox. It’s the bridge between planning and execution. Verified processes provide actionable evidence that critical systems, data, and services can be accessed if a supplier fails.
In practice, this can include:
Ensuring software, data, or operational processes are stored and can be accessed when needed.
Reviewing suppliers’ contingency strategies under extreme scenarios.
Continuously confirming that procedures are current and functional.
These measures transform assumptions into evidence. Institutions can move beyond theoretical readiness to operational control.
Supplier failure may be inevitable in some instances, but organisations can influence the duration, severity, velocity, and settlement of disruptions. Verified escrow is a practical tool in achieving that.
By holding critical software or data in an escrow arrangement that has been tested and verified, organisations gain:
Access to necessary resources if a supplier becomes unavailable.
Less reliance on recovery under duress.
Demonstrable evidence of proactive risk management.
This approach moves firms from reacting to failures toward managing their outcomes efficiently and confidently.
Our survey findings make the connection clear. Organisations that rely solely on internal planning or assumptions may feel confident, but that confidence does not always translate into compliance or readiness.
For example:
• Among respondents unsure of who is responsible for mitigating supplier risk, only 22% were highly confident, and just 52% reported full compliance with regulatory frameworks.
• Among those that requested and reviewed proof from their providers, 38% reported high confidence, a near fourfold increase.
The difference is verification. Verified escrow and formalised assessment processes turn confidence into actionable evidence.
While gaps remain, the industry is moving in a positive direction. Compared to last year:
• Fewer respondents report outright unconfidence or uncertainty.
• More organisations are clarifying ownership of supplier risk responsibilities.
• Verification practices, including escrow arrangements, are being adopted more widely.
These trends signal that institutions are learning from past experiences and regulatory guidance, embedding resilience practices that can withstand operational shocks.
For organisations aiming to move from assumptions to evidence, a few practical steps emerge:
Identify where operational continuity relies on specific suppliers or concentrated resources.
Make responsibilities explicit to reduce gaps and avoid uncertainty.
Ask suppliers for evidence of their contingency and exit plans; validate that arrangements are functional.
Hold critical software or data in secure, independently verified escrow arrangements.
Treat plans as living documents; update them as supplier landscapes and internal requirements evolve.
By following these steps, organisations reduce the gap between perception and reality, turning confidence into measurable control.
Download the Whitepaper: Supplier Stability in Operational Resilience: Follow-Up Insights and Analysis to explore how verification strengthens resilience and closes the confidence–capability gap.
Discover how financial stability and compliance readiness intersect in the supply chains of the financial services industry.
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