Error budgets, which come from Service Level Objectives (SLOs), are a way to measure and control the trade-off between the speed of software supply and the risk of reliability. Error budgets are common in modern SRE practice, but they are harder to use in banks because of operational resilience standards, tight auditability, third-party concentration risk, and the fact that disruptions affect customers and markets in different ways. This paper presents the Finance Error Budgeting Framework (FEBF): a governance-conscious, dependency-based, and regulation-aligned error budgeting approach intended for financial SRE teams. FEBF brings in (i) risk-tiered SLO design that is in line with important business services, (ii) dual-ledger burn attribution across service and dependency layers, (iii) burn-rate-driven release governance and change control integration, and (iv) evidence-ready artifacts that meet the operational resilience standards of DORA, FFIEC, and PRA. We offer clear definitions, a plan for how to put them into action, flowcharts, tables and chart specifications for empirical evaluation, and a policy playbook that is ready for use in a business. The result is a model that works, can be scaled up, and makes incidents more likely to end well while making it easier to defend against regulatory action.

Error Budgets, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Service Level Objectives (SLO), Operational Resilience, Financial Systems Reliability, Change Risk Governance, Third-Party Dependency Risk, Incident Management, Digital Operational Resilience, Regulatory Compliance, Governance-Aware Reliability Models, Third-Party Dependency Attribution, Regulated Distributed Systems, Change Risk Quantification, Digital Financial Infrastructure

Google SRE Workbook, “Example Error Budget Policy,” 2018. sre.google

Google SRE Workbook, “Implementing SLOs,” (web). sre.google

Google SRE Book, “Embracing Risk,” (web). sre.google

European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), “Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA),” notes application on 17 Jan 2025. Eiopa

EUR-Lex, Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 (DORA). EUR-Lex

FFIEC, Business Continuity Management / Business Continuity Planning guidance emphasizing availability of critical financial services. FDIC+1

Bank of England / PRA, “PS6/21 Operational resilience: Impact tolerances for important business services.” Bank of England

Bank of England, “Building operational resilience: impact tolerances for important business services” (policy text). Bank of England

Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, “Principles for operational resilience” (2021). Bank for International Settlements

BIS FSI Executive Summary, “Principles for operational resilience” (summary). Bank for International Settlements

NIST, “SP 800-160 Vol. 2 Rev. 1: Developing Cyber-Resilient Systems” (web page). NIST Computer Security Resource Center

NIST, “Developing cyber-resilient systems… anticipate, withstand, recover, adapt” (overview). NIST Computer Security Resource Center

DORA/Accelerate Report (2018), “Change failure rate ranges for elite vs low performers.” Dora

Thoughtworks, “Four Key Metrics (DORA) overview.” Thoughtworks

Reuters, “Basel proposal on tighter outsourcing/third-party risk management and documentation” (context for third-party concentration risk). Reuters