Know exactly where your operational resilience programme stands against the standard your regulator actually applies.

FourthLine delivers end-to-end operational resilience and business continuity programmes for mid-tier UK financial services firms; from IBS identification and impact tolerance setting through to tested recovery playbooks and board-ready regulatory evidence. PRA SS1/21 and FCA SYSC 15A compliant.

Book a Scoping Call with Kieran
Download the Product Overview

THE PROBLEM THIS SOLVES

Most mid-tier financial services firms have an operational resilience framework in place. Many have had one since the March 2022 deadline. What they often discover when they look more carefully, or when their regulator does, is that the programme is built on underdeveloped foundations: Important Business Services that are too broad, impact tolerances that are not evidenced, scenario tests that prove optimistic assumptions rather than stress-test them, and BCM plans that have never been tested against the recovery standards they claim to meet.

WHAT WE DELIVER

  • Important Business Service (IBS) identification and validation against PRA and FCA expectations
  • Impact tolerance setting metric-based, customer-harm, board-ready
  • End-to-end process, resource, and third-party dependency mapping per IBS
  • Business Impact Analysis (BIA) with MCBO, peak volume, and RTO/RPO definition
  • BCM framework, policy, and departmental recovery plan development
  • IBS recovery playbooks with activation triggers and decision trees
  • Severe but plausible scenario testing programme with board-ready evidence pack
  • Crisis and incident management framework with escalation protocols

  • Governance and reporting architecture for board and ExCo 

Engagement Model: Modular, Phased Programme. 

Typical Duration: 16-24 weeks

Fee Basis: Fixed Fee Delivery 

Approach:  Diagnostic Assessment (£15-25k), Programme (£40k-£160k), Annual Resilience Retainer (£60-90k).

Delivered by:
Senior Named FourthLine Certified Industry Resilience practitioners - not graduate analysts

WHY FOURTHLINE FOR THIS PRODUCT

delivery

Senior delivery

Not senior oversight. The practitioner you meet in scoping is the practitioner who delivers. No hand-off to junior resource after the sale.

regulatory

Regulatory specificity

Every deliverable maps directly to the framework your regulator applies. Not a generic consulting output adapted for compliance.

orange-icon-3

Proportionate cost

Big Four-standard rigour. Without Big Four overhead. Fixed fees. No open-ended billing.

What sets FourthLine apart is that the person who sells the engagement is the person who delivers it. Senior expertise throughout, not just at the proposal stage. The quality of the evidence pack they produced would not have looked out of place coming from a Big Four firm, at a fraction of the cost.
Chief Operating Officer, Specialist Insurer
View Case study

The Problem this solves

The Diagnostic Assessment is not a standalone exercise.
It is the starting point for an Annual Resilience Retainer engagement — giving both parties a fully
evidenced scope before committing to the full programme.

1

Diagnostic Assessment

4–6 weeks

Current state analysis against FCA/PRA/DORA

2

Gap register and remediation roadmap

Deliverable

Priority-rated remediation plan

3

Annual Resilience Retainer

12 months

 Optional continuation 

4

Ongoing senior-led resilience programme

Embedded resilience capability with continuous regulatory intelligence and supervisory readiness 

Start with a diagnostic assessment

A structured 4–6 week assessment of your firm's operational resilience and BCM position against PRA SS1/21 and FCA SYSC 15A requirements. Board-ready gap report and remediation roadmap delivered within 6 weeks. Fixed fee: £15k–£25k.

Book a Scoping Call with Kieran
Download the Diagnostic Assessment Guide