It’s been a long wait but the UK’s financial services regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has published proposed guidance for UK-regulated financial services firms when using cloud computing solutions to implement technology services or operations. Although the proposed guidance raises as many questions as it answers, the main take-away for regulated firms ought to be that some form of guidance as a framework for cloud adoption is better than nothing.

The FCA’s consultation follows its 2014 guidance on the use of third party off-the-shelf technology to support operations and is the first time the FCA has issued guidance specifically directed at cloud services. In the United States, the federal financial regulatory agencies published guidance over three years ago.