Erik Thedéen at the Riksdag Committee on Finance: “The Riksbank is building up preparedness to face a wide range of threats”

The new Sveriges Riksbank Act, which came into force on 1 January 2023, gives the Riksbank an expanded and partly new responsibility within the area of preparedness. The assignment means that the Riksbank, in addition to ensuring its own ability to maintain critical operations, must also ensure that the general public can make payments during peacetime crises and states of heightened alert.

To fulfil this new responsibility, the Riksbank has implemented a large number of concrete measures. These include:

• developing and adopting regulations setting out requirements for companies with particular significance for payments.
• producing descriptions of how companies can meet the requirements, for example through backup power and a manned wartime organisation.
• conducting and participating in a large number of exercises and training programmes.
• testing the cybersecurity of key actors in the financial system.
• establishing several new banknote depots and increased the emergency storage of cash.
• developing alternative operational sites and taken monetary policy decisions in Jönköping and Falun to ensure the ability to operate even if the regular premises are not available.

The payment system prioritised in preparedness work

During the hearing, Erik Thedéen emphasised that the threat scenario against Sweden is both broad and complex and that the Riksbank's preparedness is being built up to be able to meet a wide range of threats. He said that a robust and resilient payment system is the most important priority in the Riksbank's preparedness work going forward:

“For a long time, the focus has been on increasing efficiency and digitalising the payments market. This has been positive and it is now easy for most people to make payments. At the same time, there are increased risks that, for example, cyber-attacks and other IT disruptions can quickly have spillover effects and, in the worst case, lead to major consequences for the entire payment system. This is why we need to step up our efforts to create a payments market that can withstand different types of disruption. This work needs to be done urgently and all actors in the system need to be involved and contribute".

Companies may need to take measures that increase their costs

According to Mr Thedéen, the Riksbank will continue to require companies to participate in the work on identifying and implementing joint measures to strengthen the capacity to maintain payments in peacetime crisis situations and states of heightened alert. He also emphasised that it may be necessary to impose requirements on companies to take measures that increase their costs to enable a rapid increase of capacity in the payments field.

"In practice, this means that companies are obliged to participate in the Riksbank's ongoing work on implementing joint measures of various kinds, for example with regard to enabling offline payments. A joint analysis of which further measures are considered high priority is being carried out, but this is ultimately the Riksbank's decision. These may be fairly simple measures, or they may be of a more extensive nature, with varying additional costs".

The background to the hearing is a report requested by the Committee on Finance from the Riksbank as an in-depth follow-up of the Riksbank's preparedness activities. The full report is available below.