UK Regulators Designate Major Cloud Providers as 'Critical Third Parties' for Financial System Oversight

Starting July 13, 2026, the Bank of England, Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will jointly oversee Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Oracle. These major cloud providers have been designated as the UK's first 'critical third parties' due to their deep integration into banking, payments, and insurance sectors. This new regulatory framework aims to address systemic risks, as a failure at one provider could disrupt services across numerous financial institutions. Oversight will focus on the resilience of the critical services these companies provide to the financial system.