FX Ecosystem 08 | Resilience at CLS: Trusted to settle FX, built to withstand | ShapingFX series
In an increasingly interconnected financial landscape, resilience has become more than the ability to recover from disruption — it is a fundamental capability that supports confidence, stability and continuity across global markets.
Key insights:
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- It is critical to embed resilience throughout financial market infrastructures such as CLS.
- Continuous testing and proving of capabilities are essential to maintaining an organization’s readiness to respond to an extreme but plausible event.
- The resilience of the ecosystem within which an organization operates is as critical as an organization’s own resilience.
- Testing with the support of settlement members is a critical pillar of the CLS resilience program.
Resilience is the cornerstone of financial market infrastructures
For financial market infrastructures (FMIs) like CLS, resilience is critical. FMIs form the foundation of the financial system, enabling the smooth functioning of markets and supporting the clearing and settlement of transactions every day. In the foreign exchange (FX) market, where trillions of dollars flow through the ecosystem daily, the ability to anticipate,
withstand and adapt to disruption is essential.
Since its establishment in 2002, resilience has been central to CLS’s mission to mitigate settlement risk, underpinning its contribution to reducing systemic risk. As a critical market infrastructure at the center
of the wholesale FX market, CLS has continuously evolved its capabilities to help mitigate FX settlement risk through payment-versus-payment settlement, improving operational efficiency and supporting financial market stability.
What is Enterprise Resilience at CLS?
This paper explores how CLS has developed an Enterprise Resilience Framework designed to embed resilience across the organization and the wider FX ecosystem. It examines the changing regulatory landscape, the importance of robust technological, cyber, third-party and operational resilience capabilities, and the role of continuous testing in ensuring preparedness for extreme but plausible events.
It provides a fascinating insight into CLS’s approach to building resilience throughout the lifecycle of its services, from design and implementation through to ongoing resilience testing, recovery and adaptation. The paper also considers how collaboration with settlement members and wider market stakeholders is helping to strengthen FX ecosystem resilience.
As markets continue to face evolving operational, technological and geopolitical challenges, resilience is not a destination — it is an ongoing journey. Discover how CLS continues to invest, adapt and collaborate to help create a safer, more stable and more resilient FX market for the future.
Want to understand more about CLS’s outlook on resilience?
