Financial Infrastructure Crisis Preparedness Committee (BFI)

About BFI

Each individual player in the financial sector has an independent responsibility for ensuring an acceptable level of risk in its operations. This includes responsibility for ensuring safe and stable operating solutions and good backup solutions and emergency response systems, and for actively contributing to a robust financial infrastructure. BFI was established in 2000 to coordinate contingency preparedness efforts between financial sector actors.

In a crisis situation, BFI must notify and inform affected actors and authorities of the problems that have occurred, the potential consequences of the problems and the measures that must be implemented to resolve the problems.

BFI shall perform the necessary coordination of preparedness matters in the financial sector, including, based on the civil preparedness system, coordinating the preparation and implementation of notification plans and preparedness measures in the event of national security policy crises and war.

Finanstilsynet heads, and is the secretariat for, BFI. BFI normally has three regular meetings each year. At the meetings, the committee is updated on serious incidents that have occurred during the period.

An important task for BFI is to hold annual emergency preparedness exercises. Annual reports are prepared on BFI’s work.

The following institutions are represented on the committee as permanent members, deputies or observers:

• Finanstilsynet
• Norges Bank
• Bits AS
• BankID BankAxept (BidBax)
• Nets Norge
• Mastercard Payment Services Norge
• Tietoevry Norge
• Euronext Securities Oslo/Verdipapirsentralen ASA (VPS)
• DNB
• Nordea Bank AB, Norwegian branch
• Sparebank 1 Gruppen
• Eika Gruppen (represents other banks)
• Ministry of Finance
• Nordic Financial Cert

In addition, there are observers from the telecommunications, power sectors, the Norwegian National Security Authority and the securities and securities dealer sector.