Staff error is largest cause of op risk at central banks
Legacy systems tend to trigger most threats in jurisdictions with greater than average number of incidents
Operational risks are most widely triggered by staff error, but a range of other drivers also play a role, data from the Risk Management Benchmarks 2026 shows.
Four in five risk management departments point to staff errors (80.4%) as a driver for operational risks. Over half of respondents indicated IT issues due to legacy systems (58.7%) and cyber attacks (54.3%) as key factors. Artificial intelligence (19.6%) ranks as the rarest contributory factor across jurisdictions.
Managers experienced an
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