SS9/17 - Recovery planning
Executive Summary
**SS9/17 - Recovery Planning** is the PRA's supervisory statement establishing expectations for how UK banks, building societies, and designated investment firms must prepare and maintain recovery plans to ensure financial stability during periods of stress. This guidance supersedes the previous SS18/13 and represents a substantial tightening of recovery planning requirements, making credible, testable, and executable recovery plans a core component of prudential regulation rather than a compliance checkbox.
What Changed
SS9/17 introduced several material enhancements to recovery planning requirements: Governance and Integration: Recovery planning must be embedded within firms' risk management frameworks, with board-level oversight and integration with stress testing and ICAAP processes. The PRA expects clear governance documentation showing how plans are produced, reviewed, signed off, and implemented. Fire Drill Exercises: Firms must conduct regular fire drill exercises that simulate recovery scenarios in a live environment, testing governance arrangements, management information systems, and the practical execution of recovery options. These exercises must include testing access to central bank facilities. Implementation Playbooks: Complex recovery plans must include a "concise implementation guide"
What You Need To Do
- *Develop comprehensive recovery plans containing all minimum elements specified in the Recovery Planning Part of the PRA Rulebook and detailed in SS9/17
- *Establish governance frameworks documenting how recovery plans are produced, reviewed, approved by the board, and how recovery options would be implemented
- *Conduct fire drill exercises that simulate recovery scenarios, test governance arrangements, and validate management information capabilities
- *Create implementation playbooks (for complex plans) that enable rapid execution by senior management during stress
- *Perform detailed impact analysis for each recovery option, quantifying capital and liquidity impacts with realistic timelines
- *Integrate recovery planning with existing risk management, stress testing, and ICAAP processes
Key Dates
Compliance Impact
Urgency: HIGH
Who is Affected
Summary
Supervisory Statement 9/17