Millions of bank customers hit by Google Cloud outage. Why regulators are concerned

A disruption at Google Cloud that left millions of bank customers in Europe without access to key financial services for several hours has drawn scrutiny from financial regulators in the European Union and the United Kingdom, raising questions about the risks banks face when they depend on a handful of technology providers.

The outage on Tuesday affected services at Revolut, HSBC and Lloyds, among other financial institutions. Google said the disruption was caused by a power event at a third-party facility in its London-based europe-west2 cloud region. Services have since been restored.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) said it had contacted Google Cloud to obtain further information, understand the implications of the incident and assess its potential impact on financial institutions across the EU.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also said it was engaging with Google over the outage. Meanwhile, parliament’s Treasury Committee has written to the Bank of England and the FCA seeking details of the regulatory response, the scale of the disruption and any financial harm caused.

Why the outage matters for banks

The incident highlights a growing vulnerability in financial services. Banks increasingly rely on external technology providers for the infrastructure that supports their digital services. A disruption at a major cloud provider can therefore affect multiple financial institutions at the same time, even when the banks’ own systems are functioning normally.

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At Revolut, which has around 13 million customers in the UK, the disruption affected several services, including logging in, card payments and cash withdrawals, according to the bank’s website.

Revolut said it was reviewing the incident to reduce the impact of future disruptions involving third-party providers. It added that customer funds and data remained safe throughout the outage.

Google said it had resolved the disruption and would update its public status dashboard with an analysis of the incident. HSBC and Lloyds did not comment.

New rules put cloud providers under scrutiny

The outage is an early test of regulatory frameworks introduced in Europe and the UK to strengthen the resilience of financial services that depend on external technology companies.

The European Union last year designated 19 technology firms as critical third-party providers to the financial sector. The designation brought them under direct, coordinated oversight by three financial regulators, including the EBA.

The UK introduced a similar framework covering four cloud providers, citing the risk that an outage at a major supplier could disrupt several financial firms simultaneously. Google Cloud falls under both frameworks.

Under the UK regime, designated providers must report serious outages to the FCA and the Bank of England.

The EBA said the designation of a provider as critical establishes an EU-level oversight framework but does not transfer responsibility for incident management from the provider or remove financial institutions’ own regulatory obligations.