British banks vulnerable after outsourcing AI to US tech giants, Bank of England finds

British banks are becoming increasingly reliant on a handful of foreign tech giants to power their AI ambitions, new research from Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority has revealed, raising concerns over the City’s dependence on overseas infrastructure. The three largest cloud computing providers account for 79 per cent of reported supplier relationships among financial services firms, according to a joint survey by the Bank and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). More than a third of cloud relationships were deemed critical to operations and difficult to replace, yet just 35 per cent of those had tested plans to switch providers in the event of disruption. The findings come amid growing scrutiny of Britain’s reliance on US technology companies, with a recent Google Cloud outage highlighting the potential consequences of disruption to infrastructure used by banks and other businesses. The Treasury Committee has pressed regulators over their oversight of major clou