From Testing to Trust: Strengthening Operational Resilience in Practice

Martyn Carvey shares pragmatic insights on what operational resilience really means inside complex financial institutions. He advocates building maturity gradually—starting with simple desktop exercises before progressing to red-team testing—and stresses the need for continual learning: test, evaluate, feed back, and test again. He also describes the importance of coordination during crises, emphasizing the need for a single accountable leader, or “quarterback,” to bring structure and focus when rapid decision-making matters most.

The discussion also turns to the promise and limits of AI. Carvey welcomes its potential to accelerate insights but warns that without high-quality data and sound governance, automation can amplify errors instead of reducing risk. He closes by highlighting lessons from recent global disruptions, urging peers to translate external incidents into internal improvements. For Carvey, operational resilience is built on communication, collaboration, and the discipline to keep learning from every test.