The UK Financial Services Authority, the UK’s banking regulator has written to the country’s nine largest banks requesting details of their plans for coping with IT failures and 'critical infrastructure’ reports the Financial Times.

The authority sent the letter which also asked for the names of those senior managers responsible for information technology systems.

The FT reported that the FSA letter was written by senior executives who requested that each bank submit a written account of plans "to ensure the overall resilience of critical infrastructure and banking processes" and the contingency plans in place to restore service "within an acceptable timeframe" in the event of a failure.

Comment: While the FSA was spurred into action by the recent problems at NatWest bank where a software project went wrong and led to customers being unable to transact for several days - it is clear that the regulator is asking for detailed information on the infrastructure failure contingency plans. 
Although the FT did not report that the FSA letter specifically requested information on data center facilities infrastructure, downtime, whatever the cause is clearly on the agenda.