Bank of England to Oversee 4 Big Tech Cloud Firms From Monday as UK Tightens Financial Safeguards
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jul 10
Bank of England to Oversee 4 Big Tech Cloud Firms From Monday as UK Tightens Financial Safeguards
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 10
Summary
From Monday, the Bank of England and FCA will directly supervise the UK arms of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Oracle and Microsoft after designating them critical third parties to finance.
The four firms must show stress-testing for severe disruption scenarios and report major incidents — including cyber-attacks, power outages and natural disasters — that could hit banks and millions of customers.
The move reflects concern that concentrated reliance on foreign cloud providers could threaten financial stability; a 2025 Treasury committee review found major UK banks and building societies suffered more than a month of IT failures across 2023-2025.
An Amazon cloud glitch in Northern Virginia disrupted more than 2,000 companies last October, including Lloyds Banking Group, underscoring how overseas outages can ripple through UK banking.
The designation comes after more than 18 months of delay since regulators received the power in January 2025, and lawmakers are already urging ministers to consider similar oversight for major AI providers.
With cloud giants under oversight, are AI firms the next unregulated systemic risk to the financial system?
Will UK regulation of Big Tech safeguard finance or just stifle the innovation it now depends on?
As nations regulate US tech giants, is the global financial system fracturing into competing digital blocs?
UK Financial Sector Faces New Era: Critical Third Party Regime Targets Cloud Providers from July 2026
Overview
The UK financial sector is about to undergo a major regulatory change with the introduction of the Critical Third Party (CTP) regime. This new framework, effective July 13, 2026, brings stricter oversight to key technology providers like Microsoft, Google, AWS, and Oracle. The regime focuses only on the systemic services these providers offer to the financial sector, ensuring that regulation targets the most vital services for the UK's financial stability. By doing so, it aims to reduce risks from concentration and interconnectedness, ultimately strengthening the resilience of the entire financial ecosystem.