Britain's FCA Palantir Contract Faces Backlash Over Sensitive Financial Data Access

Britain's FCA defends Palantir contract award before lawmakers

LONDON, March 24 (Reuters) - U.S. data analytics firm Palantir, which won a contract to supply AI systems to Britain's Financial Conduct Authority, will not have access to regulatory intelligence, an FCA official said on Tuesday, as the deal came under criticism from lawmakers. Palantir Technologies (PLTR.O), opens new tab, co-founded by Peter Thiel - a billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of President Donald Trump - won a 12-week contract to analyse the FCA's internal data to help combat financial crime. Lawmakers on the parliamentary Treasury committee, however, raised their concerns with FCA officials, including Chief Executive Nikhil Rathi, over the company's potential access to sensitive regulatory data. "The other concern is that ⁠they become ubiquitous across government," Conservative lawmaker John Glen said. "Is there anything that can be done to ensure they don't become a monopoly?" Palantir has also secured contracts with Britain's Ministry of Defence and National Health Service. Jessica Rusu, the FCA's chief data, information and intelligence officer, said the procurement process had been conducted "blind", meaning the regulator did not know the identity of the winning bidder until it concluded. Palantir will act as a data processor, she said, adding that the U.S. CLOUD Act, which obliges U.S. technology firms to provide data to U.S. authorities under certain circumstances, would not apply to the FCA arrangement. FCA NEEDS 'BEST-IN-CLASS TOOLS', CEO SAYS The decision to award the contract to a U.S. provider comes ⁠after the FCA itself has warned the financial services industry that a heavy reliance on a small number of large tech firms could create systemic risks. CEO Rathi acknowledged to lawmakers that there was "a big strategic question around the deployment of big technology across ... public functions" but said tackling financial crime required stronger use of data and analytics. "We also want to be the most effective enforcer ⁠against financial crime and money laundering, and that requires us to use data intelligence more effectively and use best‑in‑class tools," he said. "They won the procurement." A Palantir spokesperson said the company was proud the FCA was using its software to tackle financial crime, adding ⁠that it was precluded from commercialising data processed in the course of its work in Britain. "The software can only be used - legally and contractually - to process data in strict accordance with the instructions of the customer," the spokesperson ⁠said. Palantir reported a sharp rise in sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, boosted by U.S. government contracts. Those deals, which include work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have drawn public criticism and prompted CEO Alex Karp to defend the firm's surveillance technology. Reporting by Phoebe Seers; Editing by Kirstin Ridley and Joe Bavier Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

The U.K. Has a New Partner in the Fight Against White Collar Crime: Palantir

A new Guardian report indicates that sensitive financial data in the U.K. will soon be handed over to Palantir. It's not an auspicious moment for the U.K. government to make such a deal. To be absolutely clear from the jump, there is no evidence that Palantir has anything whatsoever to do with the scandals around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the vibes around this deal are very much off right now. The Epstein scandal seems poised to tear the two-party system in the U.K. to shreds, and Epstein is tied to Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. Labour, the massively unpopular ruling party, has a very big Epstein problem, and seems enamored with Palantir lately. If you’re an American and you don’t follow this stuff, just know that when MP Jeremy Corbyn mentioned “this ghastly company Palantir†on the floor of Parliament last month in the context of Palantir's deal with the National Health Service (NHS), he probably only got away with it because he was already ejected from Labour long ago. And now Palantir suddenly has a deal with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), according to the Guardian, and the deal involves the American data analytics company sniffing around in internal intelligence data in order to root out white collar crime. On a trial basis for three-months, Palantir will get access to something called the FCA’s “data lake.†One anonymous FCA agent who talked to the Guardian had misgivings, asking, “Once Palantir understands how we detect money-laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?†Palantir CEO Alex Karp blurts his opinions out seemingly as much as possible, as is fashionable for tech CEOs right now. In doing so, he has not made it easy to dispel worries like the ones expressed by that anonymous FCA agent. He thinks, for instance, Americans should tolerate privacy invasions in pursuit of U.S. AI dominance over China, and that tech companies should not take moral stances in opposition to whatever the United States government wants them to do. But on social media, it’s not Karp whose involvement with the U.K. government seems to trigger concerns about untrustworthiness the most. That would be co-founder Peter Thiel, who appears in the Epstein files 2,281 times according to Wired.  Again, no specific accusation against Palantir has been made, but Thiel's ties to Epstein, and those of former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson, who is accused of feeding sensitive information to Epstein, have nonetheless created a tangled mess. Al Jazeera put it this way: "Scrutiny over Mandelson, Palantir, and its relationship with the UK government gained new urgency after the ex-ambassador’s arrest in late February over allegations contained in the Epstein files â€" millions of documents detailing the disgraced financier’s activities â€" that Mandelson had maintained a relationship with Epstein after his 2008 sex offence conviction and may have shared with Epstein market-sensitive information of financial interest to him." According to the Guardian, the data Palantir will mine for evidence of financial malfeasance includes phone recordings, social media posts, and emails. It will reportedly use its AI system called Foundry to police the 42,000 firms regulated by the FCA. In response to another deal Palantir secured with the U.K. government last year, a motion was put forward in Parliament last month and signed by 33 members. Signatories are “concerned about reports of serious allegations of complicity in human rights violations and the undermining of democratic processes made against Palantir Technologies,†and request that the government “publish all material and records relating to the December 2025 contract award decision.†Gizmodo reached out to Palantir for comment. We will update if we hear back.

'Very significant privacy concerns': UK hands over financial regulation data to Palantir to help tackle financial crime

* Palantir awarded three-month contract ahead of potential extension * The US data company would have access to seriously sensitive information * Critics have linked Palantir to ICE, Israel's military and broader human rights concerns The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a three-month trial contract worth upwards of £30,000 per week to analyze the body's data. This would mean that Palantir would need to access highly sensitive regulatory data, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading cases, as well as bank reports, consumer complaints and personally identifiable information (PII) like emails and phone numbers. Palantir's AI would likely be introduced to handle the huge amounts of data in order to detect patterns far faster than human analysts. UK-Palantir contract under trial The Guardian warns of "very significant privacy concerns" in relation to the use of AI with some of the most sensitive data there is, not to mention that the work the FCA does is also particularly sensitive - aiming to tackle drug trafficking, human trafficking and the like. The American data company already has a growing footprint in the UK government, with over £500 million in UK public sector contracts across the NHS, policing and defense. However critics are warning that, though Palantir has started pretty small in the UK, it could infiltrate further and become deeply intertwined with UK politics. Palantir has gained its fair share of criticism over links to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US and the Israeli military. MPs have called the company "questionable" and cited human rights concerns. As for the proposed FCA contract, the data will continue to be stored in the UK with the FCA retaining IP rights from the insights generated. Palantir must also delete the data after the contract expires, however questions have been raised over the FCA's decision to use real data in the pilot over synthetic data. "We ran a competitive procurement process and have strict controls in place to ensure data is protected," an FCA spokesperson added. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button! And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

MPs urge UK government to halt contract giving Palantir FCA data access

Awarding US spy-tech company deal involving sensitive financial data is 'huge error of judgment', Liberal Democrats say MPs have urged the government to halt its latest contract with Palantir, after the Guardian revealed the US spy-tech company is to gain access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data. The Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years' worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime. But the Liberal Democrats on Monday called for a government investigation into the contract, which the party said could be "a huge error of judgment", while the Green party said it should be blocked over Palantir's links to Donald Trump. Questioned on whether the UK was becoming "dangerously overreliant" on US tech companies including Palantir, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, told parliament he would prefer to have more domestic capability but added: "I don't think we're overreliant." Palantir was founded by the Donald Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel and it supports the US and Israeli militaries and the ICE immigration crackdown. In the UK it has built up more than £500m in contracts including with the NHS, police and Ministry of Defence. Insiders at the FCA, where security-cleared Palantir staff are to gain access to FCA data in a 12-week trial, have questioned if there are sufficient safeguards to prevent its "data lake" from being exploited in unintended ways. There are concerns about the potential for data about sensitive FCA investigations into high-profile figures to be accessed during Palantir's work. These have recently included the banker Jes Staley, who was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and the hedge fund boss Crispin Odey. The FCA has insisted that Palantir will be a "data processor", not a "data controller" - meaning that it could only act on instruction from the regulator. The FCA said it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data would be hosted and stored solely in the UK. Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data-trawling should be retained by the FCA, it said. But one insider told the Guardian information so far available was "very lacking in details about how the obvious risks would be controlled or limited". Daisy Cooper MP, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, called for a investigation into the FCA's Palantir contract and said: "Palantir has spent years embedding itself within the Maga machine. Awarding a contract for sensitive UK financial data to a Trump-aligned tech giant seems like a huge error of judgment." The Green Party MPSiân Berry said: "Companies like Palantir should have no place within UK government systems when they are closely involved in President Trump's illegal wars." She called for the government to "step in immediately and protect our national and economic security by blocking this contract award". Martin Wrigley MP, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons technology committee, said the FCA deal should be "stopped before it's started". "We are creating a single behemoth that our UK firms won't be able to compete against," he said. "We should be developing our own industries." Palantir's European boss, Louis Mosley, has recently sought meetings with MPs to address "misconceptions" about its technology. He denies claims Palantir may "use customer data for our own purposes" on the basis this is "something that we have no business interest in, and that we are legally and contractually prevented from doing". The official announcement of the FCA contract states Palantir will work across "all FCA datasets", which insiders have said could include personal details, as well as some trading records of banks, hedge funds and pension funds where they relate to cases of potential wrongdoing. Donald Campbell, the director of advocacy at Foxglove, a tech fairness campaign, called the contract "another worrying sign that Palantir is consolidating its hold over UK government services". "Ministers urgently need to stop and think before handing yet more contracts to this Trump-supporting spy-tech giant," he said. "There is a serious risk of 'lock-in' - the more Palantir is enmeshed in the UK's public services, the harder it may be to get them out." Palantir said it was proud its software is being used "to support the FCA in their vital work to tackle financial crime". It said the "data cannot be commercialised in any way" and "the software can only be used - legally and contractually - to process data in strict accordance with the instructions of the customer". The FCA said the data in the trial will not include trading records and there is no risk of lock-in as it is just a trial. An FCA spokesperson said: "Criminals aren't slow to use technology to cause harm - we need to stay ahead of them. We can run a trial to helps us do that while maintaining strict data controls."

FCA deal gives Palantir yet more access to inner workings of power in Britain

Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data Palantir's latest UK contract takes the AI and data analytics company into the heart of one of Britain's biggest industries: financial services, which accounts for 9% of the economy. The Miami-based company embedded its technology in the NHS in 2023, the police in 2024 and the military in 2025. Land and expand, they say in the tech industry. Palantir has followed the script building contracts worth more than £500m. Now in 2026, its deal with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to dive into the terabytes of information it gathers gives it yet another unparalleled view of the inner workings of the British authorities. It also gives it sight of a trove of data about the workings of one of the most important global centres of finance, the City of London. The appeal of companies such as Palantir to public authorities is driven by three forces: the push to find more efficient ways to use human resources amid strained public finances; the existence of lakes of data swollen by society's increased tendency to digitise transactions and communications; and the dawn of AI and the Labour government's unbridled enthusiasm for its potential to unlock elusive economic growth. Notwithstanding its former use of Peter Mandelson's lobbying company, Global Counsel, Palantir has become an influential voice in Whitehall. With earnings of $1.4bn in the last three months of last year alone, it can afford top talent and its AI-enabled data analysis systems impress many who see them, in demonstrations at least. Campaign groups rail against Palantir's work with the US Department of Homeland Security and its ICE operations, and its service to the Israel Defense Forces, but the contracts keep coming. Its technologists will arrive at the FCA headquarters in east London and find a regulator worried it is devoting too much energy to pursuing possible financial crime cases that go nowhere. It wants to use AI to better detect signs of wrongdoing so it can crack down on the serious crime of money laundering, which underpins social ills such as human trafficking and the drugs trade, as well as fraud, which affects many people and accounts for about 40% of all crimes in the UK. Its workplan for 2025-26 set out an ambition to "expand the use of data and intelligence to identify and act on the riskiest firms and/or individuals" and use "network analytics to identify harmful networks of firms and/or individuals". But as it moves to AI detection of financial wrongdoing, criminals may well respond with their own ways of beating the bots. "If the FCA relies on an AI-based detection model, a bad actor could take steps to influence that system when it reviews material," said Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay, a partner and barrister at the law firm Hickman & Rose who specialises in serious and complex financial crime. For example, they might use invisible "white text" in documents to instruct the AI to ignore anything in that document that might be incriminating. "You can absolutely see that being used in a financial crime context because developments in technological capabilities for good can equally well be exploited by criminals and frequently are exploited very well," he said. The arrival of AI as a weapon to fight money laundering has been long anticipated. "People have talked about using machine learning and earlier forms of artificial intelligence to spot patterns of money laundering] since the 1990s," said Prof Michael Levi, an internationally recognised expert in money laundering at Cardiff University. "Now that technology is available, we have to make decisions about how to use it, what the risks are." He said it was understandable that some people might fear the consequences of data companies being able to integrate different datasets in a way that could threaten privacy. But he added: "Criminals are also afraid of it [and] also some elites might be afraid, because corporate holdings through shell companies and through real companies with obscured ownership should be part of the target for these kinds of technologies."

Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data

FCA deal gives Palantir yet more access to inner workings of power in Britain Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company's deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a contract to investigate the watchdog's internal intelligence data in an effort to help it tackle financial crime, which includes investigating fraud, money laundering and insider trading. The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA's vast "data lake", which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system. The deal is part of the FCA's drive to use digital intelligence to better focus resources on rule-breaking among the 42,000 financial services firms it regulates, from major banks to crypto exchanges. There was only one other unnamed competitor for the contract. Palantir already has over £500m in UK public deals, including with the NHS, military and police. The contract has prompted warnings of "very significant privacy concerns". Palantir is expected to apply its AI system, known as Foundry, to huge quantities of information held by the watchdog, including case intelligence files marked highly sensitive, information on so-called problem firms, reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds, and data about the public, including consumer complaints to the financial ombudsman. The data includes recordings of phone calls, emails and trawls of social media posts, the Guardian understands. The FCA is one of several UK agencies which aim to stop financial crimes that underpin harms such as the drug trade and human trafficking. The deal has raised concerns inside the FCA. One source said: "Once Palantir understands how we detect money laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?" Palantir's technology is used by the Israeli military and in the US president's ICE immigration crackdown, leading to leftwing MPs in the House of Commons last month to call it a "highly questionable" and "ghastly" company. In 2023 it signed a £330m deal with the NHS, which has sparked resistance from doctors, and a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence in December 2025, which prompted MPs to highlight "reports of serious allegations of complicity in human rights violations and the undermining of democratic processes made against Palantir". Palantir has previously defended its work saying it has led to 99,000 extra operations scheduled in the NHS, helped UK police tackle domestic violence and that it "takes a rigorous approach to respecting human rights". Prof Michael Levi, an internationally recognised expert in money laundering at Cardiff University, said there is "serious under-exploitation" of data held by financial regulators, so AI is a potentially valuable technology to tackle financial crimes. But he said it was "a relevant question as to whether Palantir's owners might tipoff their friends about methodologies". "What are the protocols agreed between the FCA and Palantir about the onward use of things that they have learned in that process?" he said. The FCA said that the terms of the contract mean Palantir will be a "data processor" not a "data controller" - meaning that it can only act on instruction from the FCA. It said it will retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data will be hosted and stored solely in the UK. Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data trawling should be retained by the FCA. The FCA considered using dummy data or scrambling company and individual names but decided using full real data was the only realistic test, even though FCA guidelines encourage the use of synthetic data in pilots. "When the FCA carries out an enforcement investigation, it has powers to compel firms to hand over vast quantities of data," said Chris Houssemayne du Boulay, partner and barrister at the law firm Hickman & Rose, who specialises in defending serious and complex financial crime cases. "We could be talking about hundreds of whole email accounts and full financial records. Many innocent people will be caught up in that and the data may contain bank account details, email addresses, telephone numbers and other personal information." "If you ingest that data and use it to train an AI system, there are very significant privacy concerns," he said. "There should be serious confidentiality requirements regarding what Palantir does with the data." The FCA said Palantir could not copy the data to train its products. Palantir referred a request for comment to the FCA. A spokesperson for the FCA said: "Effective use of technology is vital in the fight against financial crime and helps us identify risks to the consumers we serve and markets we oversee. We ran a competitive procurement process and have strict controls in place to ensure data is protected."

FCA criticised over using sensitive data in AI trial with Palantir

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA's vast "data lake", which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system, the Guardian reports. Palantir is expected to apply its AI system, known as Foundry, to huge quantities of information held by the watchdog, including case intelligence files marked highly sensitive; information on so-called problem firms; reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds; and data about the public, including consumer complaints to the financial ombudsman. The data includes recordings of phone calls, emails and trawls of social media posts, the Guardian understands. Palantir's technology is used by the Israeli military and in the US president's ICE immigration crackdown. In 2023 it signed a £330m deal with the NHS, which has sparked resistance from doctors, and a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence in December 2025, which prompted MPs to highlight "reports of serious allegations of complicity in human rights violations and the undermining of democratic processes made against Palantir". The contract with the FCA has prompted warnings of significant privacy concerns. Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay, a partner at the law firm Hickman & Rose told the Guardian: "We could be talking about hundreds of whole email accounts and full financial records. Many innocent people will be caught up in that and the data may contain bank account details, email addresses, telephone numbers and other personal information. "If you ingest that data and use it to train an AI system, there are very significant privacy concerns. There should be serious confidentiality requirements regarding what Palantir does with the data." The FCA has defended its decision, saying that it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and that Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract.

Britain's FCA defends Palantir contract award before lawmakers

LONDON, March 24 (Reuters) - U.S. data analytics firm Palantir, which won a contract to supply AI systems to Britain's Financial Conduct Authority, will not have access to regulatory intelligence, an FCA official said on Tuesday, as the deal came under criticism from lawmakers. Palantir Technologies, co-founded by Peter Thiel - a billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of President Donald Trump - won a 12-week contract to analyse the FCA's internal data to help combat financial crime. Lawmakers on the parliamentary Treasury committee, however, raised their concerns with FCA officials, including Chief Executive Nikhil Rathi, over the company's potential access to sensitive regulatory data. "The other concern is that they become ubiquitous across government," Conservative lawmaker John Glen said. "Is there anything that can be done to ensure they don't become a monopoly?" Palantir has also secured contracts with Britain's Ministry of Defence and National Health Service. Jessica Rusu, the FCA's chief data, information and intelligence officer, said the procurement process had been conducted "blind", meaning the regulator did not know the identity of the winning bidder until it concluded. Palantir will act as a data processor, she said, adding that the U.S. CLOUD Act, which obliges U.S. technology firms to provide data to U.S. authorities under certain circumstances, would not apply to the FCA arrangement. FCA NEEDS 'BEST-IN-CLASS TOOLS', CEO SAYS The decision to award the contract to a U.S. provider comes after the FCA itself has warned the financial services industry that a heavy reliance on a small number of large tech firms could create systemic risks. CEO Rathi acknowledged to lawmakers that there was "a big strategic question around the deployment of big technology across ... public functions" but said tackling financial crime required stronger use of data and analytics. "We also want to be the most effective enforcer against financial crime and money laundering, and that requires us to use data intelligence more effectively and use best-in-class tools," he said. "They won the procurement." A Palantir spokesperson said the company was proud the FCA was using its software to tackle financial crime, adding that it was precluded from commercialising data processed in the course of its work in Britain. "The software can only be used - legally and contractually - to process data in strict accordance with the instructions of the customer," the spokesperson said. Palantir reported a sharp rise in sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, boosted by U.S. government contracts. Those deals, which include work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have drawn public criticism and prompted CEO Alex Karp to defend the firm's surveillance technology. (Reporting by Phoebe Seers; Editing by Kirstin Ridley and Joe Bavier)