The UK has designated Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle as critical third parties to its financial system, with the designation taking effect on July 13, 2026. HM Treasury found that more than 65 percent of British financial organizations depend on these four cloud providers, raising concerns about systemic risk if any of them experienced a major outage. The designation places the companies under direct oversight by the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority, and the Financial Conduct Authority, which can require resilience testing and mandatory incident reporting. The move mirrors earlier action taken in the European Union under its Digital Operational Resilience Act.
