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Stress Testing & Regulatory Scenarios 

From ICAAP, ILAAP and ORSA to IFRS 9 and CECL, our solutions help you assess risk, meet regulatory requirements and build resilience.

IN THIS PAGE:

Overview

Independent, defensible scenarios that quantify your exposure, meet regulatory expectations and stand up to scrutiny.

Economic shocks are becoming more frequent, complex and interconnected — from geopolitical disruption and trade policy to interest rates, commodity prices and climate transition. As regulatory expectations evolve, organisations need to understand how changing conditions could affect capital, provisioning, operations and long-term resilience, while increasingly accounting for the interaction between macroeconomic, climate and nature risks. 

Oxford Economics provides independent, regulator-ready stress testing and scenario analysis, powered by our Global Economic Model (GEM). Our transparent, consistent scenarios help organisations quantify emerging risks, strengthen resilience and meet evolving regulatory requirements with confidence. 

How we help

Financial institutions and regulated organisations need stress scenarios that reflect their unique risk profile while meeting increasingly demanding supervisory expectations. 

Our economists work alongside your risk team, combining deep macroeconomic expertise with the Global Economic Model (GEM) to build transparent, internally consistent scenarios tailored to your portfolio, geographic footprint and specific exposures. We provide the assumptions, analysis and documentation needed to support risk modelling, governance and regulatory engagement. 

Regulatory standards

  • Federal Reserve CCAR and DFAST 
  • EBA and ECB SREP 
  • Bank of England and PRA Bank Capital
  • Stress Test (BCST) 
  • HKMA, MAS, APRA and OSFI stress tests 

How we help

  • Supervisory exercises: Expand the regulator’s published scenario within GEM to create a complete, internally consistent set of macroeconomic, financial and sectoral variables for your risk models. 
  • Scenario design: Run a scenario design workshop to agree the narrative, key variables and severity, with interactive feedback throughout the build to keep risk, finance and audit stakeholders aligned incluidng:
    • Capital adequacy assessments: Design and tailor scenarios for ICAAP, ILAAP and ORSA, reflecting your own vulnerabilities, portfolio, geographic footprint and idiosyncratic exposures. 
    • Reverse stress testing: Work back from a defined point of failure to identify the combinations of economic conditions that could produce it. 
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Financial institutions need forward-looking credit loss estimates that reflect changing economic conditions and meet evolving accounting and regulatory requirements. Robust scenarios, transparent assumptions and consistent economic forecasts are critical to producing credible expected credit loss estimates and supporting model governance.

Our economists combine deep macroeconomic expertise with the Global Economic Model (GEM) to develop transparent, internally consistent scenarios for IFRS 9 and CECL modelling. We provide the economic assumptions, forecasts and analysis needed to support expected credit loss models across portfolios, geographies and a wide range of economic conditions, including baseline, adverse and bespoke scenarios.

Our services can support you with:

  • Economic scenarios and forecasts aligned to your modelling requirements
  • Baseline, adverse and bespoke scenarios reflecting changing economic conditions
  • Transparent, internally consistent assumptions to support model validation and governance
  • Global and regional economic analysis across the variables most relevant to credit risk and expected losses

Explore our dedicated IFRS 9 Scenario Service and CECL Scenario Service pages to find out more.

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Organisations increasingly need to understand how climate transition and physical risks interact with wider macroeconomic conditions and financial markets, while meeting evolving regulatory expectations.

Our economists combine deep macroeconomic and climate expertise with the Global Economic Model (GEM) to develop integrated climate, nature and macroeconomic scenarios. We provide transparent, internally consistent analysis that captures both short-term shocks and long-term structural change, supporting climate stress testing, regulatory disclosure and long-term strategy planning. 

Our climate scenario analysis covers:

  • Short- and long-term scenarios to 2060 across 59 economies
  • NGFS-aligned and Oxford Economics proprietary scenarios, with the flexibility to extend existing scenarios or develop tailored climate pathways
  • Subnational forecasts for nearly 3,000 cities and regions across the UK, Europe, US and Canada, capturing both physical and transition risks
By integrating climate risk within the same framework that models growth, inflation and financial market outcomes, rather than treating it as a separate overlay, we provide a consistent evidence base for climate stress testing, regulatory disclosure and resilience planning.
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Not every risk that matters arrives on a regulatory timetable. Organisations need to understand emerging risks — from geopolitical events and trade policy shifts to supply chain disruption, inflation, interest rates and commodity volatility — and quantify what they could mean for their business.

Using the Global Economic Model (GEM), our economists explore alternative futures and show how shocks propagate across countries, industries and markets. Scenarios can be tailored to your specific exposures and delivered at speed when events unfold, helping decision-makers understand where risks are concentrated and what an event could mean for their business. 

Scenario frameworks 

  • Global Scenarios Service: quarterly baseline, upside and downside scenarios 
  • Probability-weighted alternative scenarios 
  • Near-term shocks and long-term structural scenarios 
  • Tailored scenarios based on specific events, risks and exposures 
  • Scenarios supporting ICAAP and internal risk planning 
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What our clients say

CMHC’s Stress Testing and ORSA team has started using Oxford Economics for the purpose of Stress-Testing. Our experience has been very positive. The software is sound, intuitive and user friendly. But most of all, it allows the user to understand the links between the variables and for a certain degree of customization. We have also contracted OE to help us design Stress-Test scenarios.

Senior Manager, Stress Testing and ORSA

Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC)

We have used Oxford Economics to support our modelling and stress testing for the last few years, and they have consistently delivered high-quality, data-driven insights that have been instrumental in shaping our strategic decision-making. Their rigorous analysis, global perspective, and ability to tailor research to our specific needs make them a trusted partner in navigating complex economic and financial landscapes.

Cynergy

Why us?

We act as an extension of our clients’ teams, combining rigorous research, deep industry expertise, and compelling storytelling to deliver thought leadership that informs decisions, influences stakeholders, and drives measurable impact. Here is what sets our approach apart.

Independence that regulators, boards and investors trust 

Our independently produced scenarios are trusted by banks, supervisors, central banks and investors worldwide. 

Macro, global-to-city and industry coverage in one consistent model 

We cover 200+ countries, 100 industries and 8,000 cities and regions within one consistent framework, showing how shocks affect the geographies and sectors that matter most.

Integrated macroeconomic  expertise 

We assess climate and other risks alongside wider macroeconomic conditions, providing a consistent view of how risks interact and affect economic and financial outcomes.

Transparent, regulator-ready methodology

Every scenario is transparent, fully documented and designed for supervisory scrutiny, with model validation reports and supporting documentation available for governance and audit. 

Direct access to our economists 

Clients work directly with the economists who develop the scenarios, drawing on 400+ in-house economists for detailed challenge on the assumptions underpinning a forecast and quick-response updates when global developments change.

Speak to our team

Discuss your stress testing and regulatory scenario requirements.

Who we help

Financial institutions 

Support capital planning, regulatory compliance and risk management with regulator-ready scenarios for ICAAP, IFRS 9, CECL, climate stress testing and supervisory exercises worldwide. 

Insurers 

Meet ORSA, solvency and own-risk scenario requirements with independent, documented macroeconomic and climate scenarios, and stress reserving and investment portfolios against consistent alternative economic paths.

Capital risk and sustainability teams

Assess the impact of macroeconomic, geopolitical and climate risks on operations, revenue and investment decisions, while supporting climate disclosures and resilience planning.

Asset managers & pension funds 

Stress portfolios and funding positions against consistent macroeconomic, climate and geopolitical scenarios, and evidence scenario assumptions to trustees, investment committees and regulators. 

Speak to our team

Discuss your stress testing and regulatory scenario requirements. We support ICAAP, supervisory stress tests (CCAR, EBA, BCST), climate stress testing and IFRS 9 / CECL programmes worldwide. Speak to us today.

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