Financial regulators warn over reliance on few tech providers

Shot of a young male hacker cracking a computer code in the dark. [Courtesy/GettyImages]

The country’s top seven financial watchdogs have warned that the financial sector's growing reliance on a handful of third-party technology providers poses a serious risk to the national economic stability, as a single point of failure could disrupt services across multiple institutions and the wider economy. 

The watchdogs who include the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in a communique released after their annual Joint Financial Sector Regulators Forum held in Naivasha, warned that the concentration of key services with a few external tech firms requires urgent official scrutiny and subsequent overhaul to prevent a catastrophic failure in the financial system.