A seven-hour, 52-minute Google Cloud outage in London prompted UK lawmakers to seek regulators’ account of disruption at financial firms and whether customers suffered losses.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee, wrote to Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Chief Executive Nikhil Rathi on Oct. 20. Her letter said reports suggested problems at several UK financial institutions had affected services for their customers.
The Committee asked when regulators learned of the outage, how they responded, how many financial firms and consumers were affected, and which services were disrupted. It also asked whether customers suffered financial losses or other harm. The inquiry follows an earlier update on Google’s mitigation and the committee’s impact request.
Google’s incident record places the disruption in its London region from 2:08 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET (06:08 to 14:00 UTC) on Oct. 20. The company attributed the outage to a power event in the europe-west2-b zone. Some services across the wider region also had errors and intermittent network problems.
In a final update at 10:03 a.m. ET (14:03 UTC), Google said most affected products had been mitigated, though “a very small number” of customers might still be affected. Google said it planned to release an incident analysis after completing its internal review.
Reuters reported that an European Banking Authority (EBA) spokesperson said the authority had contacted Google Cloud to gather information and assess possible effects on EU financial entities. Reuters also reported that the FCA was engaging with Google.
Google Cloud EMEA Limited has been designated a Critical Third Party under the UK oversight framework since July 13. The Bank of England’s framework gives regulators powers to gather information, set requirements and enforce rules for designated providers’ services considered systemic. The Bank says reliance on a small number of technology providers can expose multiple financial firms to disruption at one supplier. HM Treasury says financial firms remain responsible for managing risks from their suppliers.
Financial firms and their customers bore the service disruption, while the Committee’s letter seeks information on any resulting losses. It requested an initial response by Nov. 4, 2026, and a full response by Jan. 20, 2027.
