Britain’s major banks are facing the Bank of England’s 2025 stress test, in which seven lenders must survive recession, falling asset prices and global market panic. Each coped admirably until an assessor asked for the number to call about a missing payment.
Regulators describe the exercise as a severe but plausible economic shock. The Prudential Cardigan Authority calls the customer contact part “Tuesday”. It starts when somebody says, “I have tried the app”, then develops into an event that requires a quiet room and the removal of all sharp stationery.
Customer contact remains a category five event
Sir Clive Liquidity Sock, chief emergency cushion arranger at the Prudential Cardigan Authority, said: “Banks can absorb a 40 per cent fall in house prices. They can withstand unemployment, inflation and the collapse of a heavily indebted sandwich chain. But Mrs Linda Scroggins, 61, has pressed ‘something else’ twice. At that point, the capital buffer is for everyone’s safety.”
Under the new module, one simulated lender put the Bank of England on hold. Another sent a security code to a telephone number it had just described as invalid. A third offered an urgent digital journey. It consisted of a spinning wheel, a cheerful tick and six screens explaining why the branch had closed.
Bank chiefs said this did not demonstrate a weakness in customer service. It demonstrated a customer’s unreasonable expectation that an account containing their money could be discussed with a person. To prevent this happening again, every caller will receive a 19 digit reference, an expiry date from 2018 and a chatbot called Darren.
By the end, regulators declared the lenders sufficiently robust to survive a once in a century crash. The missing payment customer has been advised to keep her details safe, not share her password and wait a moment while Darren looks into it. Darren has been looking into it since 2019.
Read the real story: the Bank of England’s stress test announcement.
