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UK companies that outsource their data to cloud providers must comply with the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules, including having a plan if the cloud computing firm faces an outage.

Some are concerned that the US tech companies’ growing presence in the infrastructure underpinning global financial markets may evolve into a greater challenge, including them becoming the exchanges themselves.

For now, they are looking to make money from selling the cloud infrastructure “so won’t be looking to compete with their clients, but long term they will want to harness the knowledge” and may therefore expand, said Beattie.

In October, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority began seeking views on the role of Big Tech in finance.

Sheldon Mills, executive director of consumers and competition at the FCA, is assessing competitive threats and said: “This is vital when we consider the role of Big Tech firms in the provision of key technological infrastructure like cloud services.”

It is an assessment that points to how Big Tech may eventually look to build on this newfound interest in exchanges and their data. “Right now they need each other but long term, the friendly supplier could become a very big threat,” Beattie said.