The European Supervisory Authorities meet stakeholders from across the financial sector amid preparations for the Digital Operational Resilience Act

The three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA – ESAs) held a joint public event in the format of a technical discussion about the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) on 6 February 2023.

The online event gathered over 2,000 representatives from credit and payment institutions, investment firms, (re)insurance undertakings, ICT third-party service providers and other financial entities. „The event allowed industry participants to engage with regulators on the new legislation, share their initial views and raise any potential areas of concern regarding the policy mandates the ESAs have to develop over the course of 2023 and 2024.” – according to the press release.

Petra Hielkema, Chairperson of EIOPA, and Gerry Cross, Chairperson of the Joint Committee Sub-Committee on Digital Operational Resilience, opened the conference on behalf of the three ESAs. Ms Hielkema highlighted that the ESAs “look forward to further enhancing the operational resilience of the financial industry by supporting the supervisory community and the industry in mitigating the risks and seizing the opportunities of the digital transformation – including through the implementation of the DORA.” Mr Cross underlined that “the implementation of DORA is uniquely cross-sectoral and consequential” and that “the regulatory community is highly committed to its successful implementation.”

Following a short update by Mattias Levin, Deputy Head of the EU Commission’s Digital Finance Unit at DG FISMA, on the latest developments concerning DORA, senior experts from the three ESAs provided a high-level overview of the policy mandates and opened the floor to participants to share their views. The policy mandates discussed covered ICT risk management, incident reporting, the register of information and criticality criteria.

Natasha Cazenave, Executive Director at ESMA, and François-Louis Michaud, Executive Director at the EBA, made the closing remarks. Ms Cazenave thanked the stakeholders for their “questions and valuable input which the three ESAs will consider carefully as [they] pursue their policy work on this major cross sectoral legislation”. Looking ahead at the next steps in the development of the policy mandates, Mr Michaud added that “an open public consultation is envisaged for every policy mandate where all interested stakeholders will have time to provide their written input on each draft mandate.”

The presentation given during the event can be accessed on the event page.