Regulatory Alerts2025-01-01
CB Circular No. 18/2025 on Six-Day BCM Centre Operations for ZIPSS, CSD and Bank Supervision
The Bank of Zambia will operate the ZIPSS, CSD, and Bank Supervision Application live environments from its Business Continuity Management Centre for six consecutive days between August 25 and 30, 2025. All market participants must route transaction traffic through the BCM Centre servers and configure their systems to connect with these servers after close of business on August 23, 2025, and again following the operations on August 30, 2025. This mandatory system reconfiguration ensures uninterrupted transaction processing and validates the financial market's operational resilience during extended BCM Centre operations.
[Logo: Bank of Zambia]
Bank of Zambia OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR - OPERATIONS
BOZ/EXEC/DG/bcm/pm
August 12, 2025
CB Circular No. : 18/2025
To : The Accountant General – Ministry of Finance and National Planning Chief Executive Officers – All Commercial Banks Chief Executive Officers – All Non-Bank Financial Institutions Chief Executive Officers – Zambia Electronic Clearing House Limited Chief Executive Officer – National Pension Scheme Authority
SIX-DAY OPERATIONS AT THE BUSINESS CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT CENTRE FOR THE ZAMBIA INTERBANK PAYMENT AND SETTLEMENT SYSTEM, THE CENTRAL SECURITIES DEPOSITORY AND THE BANK SUPERVISION APPLICATION
Reference is made to the above subject.
The Bank of Zambia will operate the Live Environments of the Zambia Interbank Payment and Settlement System (ZIPSS), Central Securities Depository (CSD) and the Bank Supervision Application (BSA) from the Business Continuity Management (BCM) Centre during the period August 25 – 30, 2025. The objective of the exercise is to assess the resilience of the Market to operate from the BCM Centre continuously for a period of six days.
In view of this, all participants will be required to route all ZIPSS and CSD traffic for the week through the servers at the BCM Centre. Consequently, participants should ensure that their systems are configured to communicate with the servers at the BCM Centre after end of business on Saturday, August 23, 2025, in readiness for operations on August 25, 2025. Further, participants will be required to configure the systems to communicate with the servers on Production after close of business on Saturday, August 30, 2025, in readiness for operations on September 1, 2025. It will be important that participants implement these changes on the specified dates to avoid disruptions in transaction processing for their customers.
Should you have any clarifications, kindly contact zipss.helpdesk@boz.zm for ZIPSS related queries, csdhelpdesk@boz.zm for CSD related queries and BSA.BCM.Tests@boz.zm for BSA related queries.
[Signature]
Francis Chipimo (PhD) DEPUTY GOVERNOR - OPERATIONS
cc Governor Deputy Governor – Administration Heads of Department Assistant Director – Communications
Bank Square, Cairo Road, P.O. Box 30080, Lusaka, Zambia Tel:+260-211-399303, 399300, E-mail: dgo@boz.zm. Web: http://www.boz.zm