The UK Government has designated four of the world's largest cloud and technology providers, Microsoft, Google Cloud, AWS and Oracle, as Critical Third Parties (CTPs), placing them under joint supervision by UK financial regulators from 13 July 2026.
Under the new regime, the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority will jointly supervise the critical services these companies deliver to the financial sector. The entities designated are Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL and Oracle Corporation UK Limited.
The move responds to the growing dependence of banks, insurers and financial market infrastructures on cloud computing. Because so many institutions rely on the same handful of suppliers, an outage at one provider could hit numerous firms simultaneously and jeopardise services that millions of consumers and businesses use daily.
Oversight will require the designated companies to maintain strong arrangements for identifying, managing and recovering from operational disruption to critical services. Regulators will gain powers to collect information, evaluate resilience and collaborate with providers on continuity risks, including creating and enforcing rules specific to CTPs where needed.
The designations were made following a period of evidence gathering and engagement with the providers. The Government has framed the approach as targeted and proportionate, noting the regime is a rolling one, meaning additional companies could be designated in future if required to protect UK resilience. It views a stable financial system as fundamental to economic growth, arguing that stronger oversight of critical services will underpin confidence, investment and innovation.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister Rachel Blake MP said, 'We are a world-leading financial centre, and maintaining trust in our financial system is essential to its success. These designations will help ensure the critical services financial firms rely on remain resilient, protecting consumers and businesses while supporting growth across the economy. The designations mark a major step in strengthening the resilience of the UK's financial system.'