Bank of England live on Swift’s MIRS contingency platform
The Bank of England has gone live with Swift’s MIRS contingency system
The Bank of England has become the first central bank to go live with an implementation of the Market Infrastructure Resiliency Service contingency system it has been piloting with Swift over the past few years.
Swift announced the development of MIRS in July 2011. It operates and hosts the platform, while central banks manage the business elements through a Crisis Command Centre.
Other central banks involved in the development are expected to adopt the system, which is designed to be used by any high value payments infrastructure, not just those that use Swift.
“Given the prominent role that RTGS systems play in the world economy, it is vital to safeguard effectively against operational disruptions and manage related risks,” Juliette Kennel, head of market infrastructures at Swift. “MIRS provides market infrastructures with the necessary tools to maintain business as usual operations even in the very unlikely but high impact event that their first and second lines of defence were to fail.”
The Bank of England went live on MIRS at the end of last month, following testing on the UK’s CHAPS payment scheme . In a statement, the Bank said that the RTGS will continue to operate “even under the most extreme conditions”.
Phil Kenworthy, managing director of CHAPS Co, said: “We are delighted with this strategic enhancement to the UK’s settlement system, and strongly believe that MIRS will deliver real benefits to all CHAPS users. CHAPS will continue to work closely with the Bank of England to deliver further initiatives that mitigate operational risk to the country’s financial infrastructure.”
