The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has signalled it wants much firmer scrutiny of the technology providers underpinning the UK’s financial system, following a series of service outages that exposed the sector’s dependency on a handful of major digital suppliers.
In an interview with The Guardian, FCA deputy chief executive Sarah Pritchard said she intends to “strengthen” regulatory oversight of critical third-party technology firms, including global cloud providers that play an increasingly central role in UK banking and financial markets, claims UKTech.
Pritchard said the regulator is “ready” to supervise the role of major web services companies such as Amazon and Google, whose cloud platforms now support everything from payment processing to trading operations. Her comments follow a string of operational disruptions that have highlighted the fragility of the sector’s digital infrastructure.
She pointed to the “very frequent reminders” of the need for “good, strong operational resilience and cyber controls”. Concerns escalated last month after a high-profile AWS outage disrupted thousands of businesses across the UK. Financial firms including Wise, Halifax, Lloyds and the London Stock Exchange were among those affected, reinforcing fears that the concentration of cloud services creates single points of failure for critical national infrastructure.
The incident reignited debate about the limited regulatory reach over cloud giants and the systemic risks they pose. Critics argue that a small number of service providers now support vast portions of the banking ecosystem, leaving institutions exposed if one of them suffers a cyber incident or technical failure.
Responding to questions about the lack of strict oversight, Pritchard said the FCA is prepared to take a more direct role once the government confirms which firms will be formally classified as critical third parties. “We would like to see the system strengthen and we stand ready to supervise jointly with the PRA and the Bank of England when there is a designation that’s made,” FCA deputy chief executive Sarah Pritchard said.
Her remarks reflect a growing recognition across regulators that the resilience of UK finance is now deeply interlinked with the operational performance of global technology suppliers. Financial institutions are also under pressure to review their reliance on single providers and bolster contingency planning as the regulatory environment evolves.
Keep up with all the latest RegTech news here
Copyright © 2025 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
