The Resilient Bank: Why Technology Resilience is a C-Suite Business Strategy

77% of banking and finance leaders say their worst tech outage in the last two years had nothing to do with hackers.

Why this matters to BFSI leaders today?

Banks do not close anymore. Payments, loans and claims move every hour of every day. When something breaks, even for a few minutes, customers notice right away. So do regulators. And once trust is shaken, it takes a long time to earn back.

What we found

As per a survey conducted on Mint CIO Circle's The C-Suite Circle Community, made up of leaders from banks, NBFCs, insurers and fintechs, we asked a simple question. What caused your worst tech outage? Almost 77% pointed to something inside their own walls. A bad update. A small human error. A vendor problem. Only a small number blamed a cyberattack.

This changes the conversation. Most banks spend heavily to guard against outside attacks. Far fewer spend the same energy fixing the small, everyday risks already sitting inside their own systems.

A simple way to think about resilience

Our report lays out five steps every bank can build into daily work. Spot problems early. Protect the systems that matter most. Catch issues fast. Respond calmly. Recover without losing data. None of this is complicated. Most banks just are not doing it consistently yet.

The report includes two real examples from Kyndryl's own work. One bank cut its recovery time nearly in half without buying a single new server. Another bank moved its entire cloud setup in just 15 days with zero downtime for customers.

The question every bank should ask

If your most important system failed right now, would your board hear about it from your own team, or read about it in the news first?

What the full report covers

The Resilient Bank brings together our own research with direct quotes from leaders at HDFC Life, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Namdev Finvest and Kyndryl. It makes the case for why resilience needs to move out of the IT team's hands and onto the board's table.