Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle fall under direct supervision by Britain's financial watchdogs from today, the first companies ever brought inside the UK's new oversight regime for the technology underpinning banks. The logic is concentration: the Treasury found more than 65% of UK organisations rely on the same four providers, so a single bad outage could freeze apps, payments, and markets for millions of people at once.
HM Treasury named the four on Friday, designating the legal entities Microsoft Ireland Operations, Google Cloud EMEA, Amazon Web Services EMEA, and Oracle Corporation UK as Critical Third Parties under powers created by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023. The Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority, and the Financial Conduct Authority jointly oversee them from Monday, 13 July 2026, applying rules the three regulators finalised for the regime in January 2025.
