Operational Readiness Assessment

Glossary of the Settlement Integrity Institute · v1.0 · Group II — Operations

Definition

The structured examination of a settlement infrastructure — its components, bindings, controls, and stress responses — undertaken to render an integrated determination of whether the infrastructure is fit to operate at the value, volume, and counterparty exposure represented to its participants. An Operational Readiness Assessment evaluates the system as a whole; it is not a sum of attestations covering its parts.

Notes

The assessment is examined, not asserted. Issuer self-attestation, custodian SOC reports, smart-contract audits, and chain-level certifications are inputs to an Operational Readiness Assessment; none, individually or in combination, constitutes one. The assessment exists to produce a determination — a statement, by an authority with the standing to make it, that the integrated system meets the operational suitability criteria the infrastructure must satisfy. It is the procedural counterpart to Operational Suitability: the how by which the what is determined.

The Federal financial institution agencies have built an extensive supervisory examination apparatus for the institutions they supervise — the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook,1 the Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships,2 and the FFIEC Business Continuity Management booklet3 together prescribe how an examiner evaluates technology, third-party reliance, and resilience inside a regulated institution. An Operational Readiness Assessment of a tokenized settlement infrastructure draws on these examination disciplines but applies them at the layer they were not designed for: the integrated multi-party system whose components span institutions, jurisdictions, and trust regimes.

See also

Operational Suitability · Trust Fabric · Recertification Cycle · Methodology Authority

References

  1. ↩ Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, FFIEC Information Technology Examination Handbook. occ.gov
  2. ↩ Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FDIC, and OCC, Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships: Risk Management (June 6, 2023). federalreserve.gov
  3. ↩ Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, FFIEC IT Examination Handbook — Business Continuity Management Booklet (November 2019). occ.gov