UK designates Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle as critical

The United Kingdom has designated four major U.S. technology companies as critical third parties to its financial system, bringing Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle under direct regulatory oversight for the first time. The designations, announced on July 10, 2026, will take effect on July 13, 2026, and are the first made under a new regime established by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023.

The move targets the specific UK legal entities through which these cloud giants provide services to the financial sector: Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, and Oracle Corporation UK Limited. The oversight will apply only to the systemic services they sell to banks, insurers, and financial market infrastructure firms. The decision follows a Treasury assessment that found more than 65 percent of UK organizations rely on the same four providers for critical infrastructure, creating a concentration risk where a single outage could disrupt many firms simultaneously and affect millions of consumers.

The new status is a supervisory tool, not an accusation of wrongdoing. It empowers the Bank of England, the Prudential...