More than 10 million UK adults could soon see their finances handled by an AI agent, according to a landmark review published this week by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which warns the industry is approaching a structural shift it may not be ready for.
The Mills Review on AI in retail financial services sets out a stark trajectory: the sector is moving away from human-led decision-making towards AI-enabled services that are continuous and increasingly delegated. In other words, consumers will not simply be advised by machines, they will hand over the steering wheel entirely.
The appetite for this shift already appears to be forming. As detailed by Areg Nzsdejan, CEO of Cardamon, in a recent post, the review found that one in five UK adults are open to allowing AI to make financial decisions on their behalf, a figure that suggests delegated, agentic finance could move from novelty to mainstream far faster than regulators anticipated. The review concludes that AI could fundamentally reshape retail financial services by 2030.
The opportunity, according to the review, is significant. AI has the potential to improve consumer outcomes and support growth across the sector. But the risks are equally pronounced.
The technology could amplify threats associated with fraud, cyber security and consumer harm, precisely the areas where regulators have historically struggled to keep pace. Crucially, the review notes that consumer adoption will hinge on three factors: trust, control and access.
To prepare for this transition, the review makes seven recommendations to the FCA Board. These include securing and adapting the regulatory perimeter, strengthening system-wide coordination and oversight, and monitoring the shift towards autonomous models so that regulatory frameworks can adapt accordingly.
The review also calls on the regulator to scale up the FCA’s AI Lab to support AI models and system innovation across financial services, and to enable the foundations for agentic finance, the infrastructure needed for AI agents to act on consumers’ behalf.
Perhaps most notably, the recommendations urge the FCA to modernise its own operations, building and adopting an AI-enabled agentic supervisory model, and developing a trusted public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service for consumers.
The message for the FinTech sector is clear in that the regulatory architecture of the next decade is being drafted now, and firms building agentic finance propositions should expect both new opportunities and new scrutiny.
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