“DORA is a force for good and will help businesses to make better decisions, faster”

In 2004, at the Washington DC HQ of the FBI, assistant director Chris Swecker convened a press conference to highlight the problem of mortgage fraud, which he said “has the potential to be an epidemic”.

With little movement from the financial sector or regulators to address this “pervasive problem” that was “on the rise”, Swecker held another news conference the following year. He was joined by officials from the US Dept of Housing and Urban Development and the Internal Revenue Service.

The message was clear. The FBI had insight into a significant threat that, if left unaddressed, could create wholesale financial disruption and lasting economic damage. This was not a case of a crisis that was unavoidable, but of weak corporate governance and weak risk management.

What, you might ask, has this got to do with you? And why am I revisiting the causes of the financial crisis?

Bigger, better, faster

The answer lies in DORA. This is the EU’s recently proposed digital finance package, the Digital Operational Resilience Act,