BANKS and financial institutions must now notify the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) within one hour of discovering payment system-related issues.
Amendments to incident management provisions under the Manual of Regulations for Payment Systems, covering PhilPaSS participants, were detailed in a memorandum issued by the central bank’s Peso Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Management Committee.
The revised framework, which took effect immediately following committee approval last March 31, 2026, requires participants to immediately coordinate with the BSP upon detecting connectivity or system availability issues affecting critical operations such as transaction monitoring, report generation and receipt of settlement notifications.
Institutions must determine whether the disruption originates from their own systems or from the RTGS platform. If it stems from the participant’s system or connection, the rules mandate an “immediate incident investigation” and activation of the institution’s internal incident management framework.
Banks and financial institutions must submit an incident notification report to the BSP within one hour from discovery, underscoring the regulator’s push for faster escalation of operational risks in the financial system.
Participants were likewise required to keep the BSP informed of developments until the issue is resolved, provide necessary support for remediation, and activate their business continuity plan (BCP) when needed.
To minimize transaction disruptions, the BSP allowed institutions to adopt alternative settlement mechanisms if the issues remain unresolved after two hours. These include bilateral netting arrangements with counterparties, appointing a paying agent to process transactions on their behalf, or invoking established BCP procedures.
For financial market infrastructure and clearing switch operators, multilateral netting arrangements and joint continuity plans with the BSP may also be activated.
In cases where the disruption originates from the RTGS system itself, participants are advised to monitor BSP advisories and can likewise resort to alternative settlement options if the issue persists beyond two hours.
The memorandum also reinforces business continuity measures, including detailed procedures for handling scenarios where participants are unable to connect to the RTGS system or when the system itself becomes unavailable. These include transaction uploads via BSP facilities or secure cloud storage as well as on-behalf processing by the central bank.
“At a minimum, the Bangko Sentral and the participants shall conduct annual tests of this BCP to assess its continued effectiveness,” it said. “The Bangko Sentral shall issue guidelines on testing procedures, as necessary.”
NIÑA MYKA PAULINE ARCEO
