Bank of England handed powers to regulate key tech firms including Amazon and Google
Summary
The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will begin regulating four major tech companies—Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Microsoft—that provide key services to UK banks. These firms must prove they can handle emergencies like cyber-attacks and outages to protect financial stability and consumers.Key Facts
- Starting next week, the Bank of England and FCA will oversee cloud and tech service providers critical to UK banking.
- The companies involved are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Microsoft.
- These firms must conduct stress tests simulating emergencies to show they can maintain strong operations.
- They must report significant issues such as cyber-attacks, power failures, or natural disasters to regulators.
- These tech providers handle important banking operations including data storage and fraud detection.
- A major outage last year at Amazon’s cloud service impacted over 2,000 UK companies, showing risks of relying on a few foreign tech firms.
- The UK government delayed over 18 months in deciding which companies should be regulated, despite having the power since early 2025.
- There are ongoing discussions about whether AI companies should also be regulated in the future due to potential financial risks.
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