The Bank of England’s (hereafter ‘the Bank’) original concurrent stress-testing framework was established following a Recommendation from the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) in March 2013. Since 2014 the Bank has undertaken regular concurrent stress testing of the UK banking system to support the FPC and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in meeting their objectives.footnote[1]
The Bank published its updated approach to stress testing the UK banking system in 2024. The updated approach maintains focus chiefly on concurrent stress tests of the financial resilience of the UK banking system, for which the largest and systemically important banks have a particular significance. footnote[2] The overarching aim of the Bank’s approach to stress testing the UK banking system is to support both the FPC and the PRA in meeting their statutory objectives for macroprudential and microprudential policy.
One of the core aims of the Bank’s approach to stress testing the UK banking system is to provide a quantitative, forward-looking assessment of the capital adequacy of the UK banking system and individual banks within it, and thus the extent to which they can support the real economy in stress. The results of such stress tests are a key tool in informing judgements of the FPC and Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC) when setting banking system-wide and bank-specific capital buffers, as well as informing a broader understanding of risks in the UK banking system. As such, the aims and use of the Bank Capital Stress Test’s are similar in nature to that of the annual cyclical scenario (ACS) exercises under the Bank‘s previous concurrent stress-testing framework.
Further details on the stress test and its scenario are provided in the ‘Stress testing the UK banking system: key elements of the 2025 Bank Capital Stress Test’ (hereafter ‘the Key elements’).footnote[3]
The 2025 stress test and methodology have been designed and calibrated by Bank staff, under the guidance of the FP