Crisis management: getting ready to act

What it is about

Jorge Luís García, Director of Financial Stability at Banco de México, presented at the Fourth Annual Risk Conference (September 17, 2026) how to prepare to manage a financial crisis. He clarifies that the opinions are his own responsibility and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Banco de México.

The 24 slides start from the idea that prevention is important but not infallible and that, in a crisis, time is scarce, information is incomplete and options are limited. They review the ways of being prepared: early warning, response and recovery indicators; quantitative and qualitative stress tests; contingency plans with clear governance and a communication strategy; and training exercises, from drills and tabletop exercises to controlled cyberattacks and tests of access to central bank liquidity.

Objectives

• Explain why crisis management requires prior planning and an understanding of the interconnections of the system.
• Describe the preparation tools: indicators, stress tests, contingency plans and simulation exercises.
• Show how cyberattack exercises are run with red, blue and purple teams.

Key takeaways

1. System resilience depends more and more on interconnections: the goal is for the system to absorb, adapt and recover from disruptions while continuing to perform its critical functions.
2. The scenarios of stress tests are not forecasts and do not reflect a probability of occurrence: they are extreme, but plausible.
3. A contingency plan needs escalation processes, pre-assigned roles, defined decision mechanisms to act with incomplete information and a communication strategy with templates agreed in advance.
4. Systemic tabletop exercises involve diverse sectors and teams; they are not passed or failed and are not supervisory exercises.
5. Intermediaries must be able to access central bank liquidity: identify available collateral, prepare the legal documents and run operational access tests.