European financial supervisors have reached out to Google following a significant cloud computing disruption earlier this week that temporarily disabled online services at multiple major banks. The outage, which occurred on Tuesday and persisted for several hours, stemmed from a power-related incident at a third-party facility supporting Google Cloud’s London-based europe-west2 region.
This network of data centres and availability zones underpins services for customers across Europe.
Google confirmed that engineering teams restored full availability after the event and stated that services were back online, with the company planning to release a detailed analysis of the incident through its public service health dashboard.
Among the financial institutions affected were Revolut, Lloyds Banking Group, and HSBC.
Customers reported difficulties logging into banking applications, processing card payments, and completing ATM withdrawals.
Downdetector and similar monitoring services recorded thousands of user reports in the UK during the morning hours.
Other non-banking services, including certain court video platforms, delivery networks, and public-sector websites, also experienced interruptions.
Banks emphasised that customer funds and data remained secure throughout the disruption, and most services returned to normal by the afternoon or early evening.
The European Banking Authority confirmed it has been in contact with Google Cloud to gather additional details about the incident.
The authority is seeking to evaluate the broader implications and determine the potential effects on financial entities operating within the European Union.
Separately, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority stated that it is engaging with Google to better understand the impact.
Under the UK’s recently introduced critical third-party regime, providers such as Google Cloud are required to notify the FCA and the Bank of England of serious outages.
The Bank of England has not issued public comment on the matter.
This episode highlights longstanding regulatory concerns about the financial sector’s increasing reliance on a small number of external technology suppliers.
Both the UK and the EU have designated Google Cloud—along with a limited group of other major cloud operators—as a critical third-party provider. In the UK, this designation, finalised in July, grants the FCA, the Bank of England, and the Prudential Regulation Authority direct oversight powers over such firms.
The EU framework similarly establishes supervisory arrangements for designated providers while preserving the primary responsibility of financial institutions for managing their own operational resilience and customer services.In response to the outage, the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee has written to the Bank of England and the FCA.
The committee is requesting information on the regulators’ handling of the incident, the overall scale of the disruption, and whether any customers suffered financial losses.
These inquiries reflect heightened scrutiny of how quickly critical banking functions can be restored when dependent infrastructure fails, and of the adequacy of contingency arrangements maintained by both banks and their technology partners.
While individual banks remain accountable for the continuity of services they offer customers, the incident has reinforced the rationale for the newer oversight regimes.
Supervisors aim to ensure that concentration risks in cloud infrastructure do not create systemic vulnerabilities across the financial system. Google has apologised for the inconvenience and continues to work with affected clients. Further details on the root cause and any remedial measures are expected as regulators complete their assessments.
