LONDON, July 6, 2026 — The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published an AI review examining how artificial intelligence could reshape retail financial services by 2030 and beyond, concluding that AI is likely to become a defining force across the sector while setting out seven recommendations for the FCA Board and Executive to prepare the UK’s regulatory framework for increasingly autonomous AI-enabled financial services.
Commissioned by the FCA Board and led by Executive Director Sheldon Mills, the Mills Review is described by the regulator as the first regulator-led study of its kind globally. The report examines AI’s long-term implications for consumers, firms, markets and regulators, and outlines recommendations intended to help the UK financial sector prepare for the next phase of AI adoption.
AI-driven transformation of retail financial services
The review identifies four structural shifts expected to reshape retail financial services over the remainder of the decade: the transformation of firm operations, changes in consumer financial journeys, evolving competition and market power, and the amplification of fraud and cyber risks.
According to the FCA, AI has the potential to improve access to financial services, increase personalisation and enhance operational efficiency, while also introducing new risks relating to consumer protection, operational resilience, market concentration and financial crime.
Research commissioned for the review found that one in five UK adults—equivalent to approximately 11 million people—would be likely to use AI capable of acting autonomously within predefined objectives for personal finance, although respondents also expressed concerns about trust and retaining control over such systems.
Regulatory priorities
The review recommends that the FCA secure and adapt the regulatory perimeter, strengthen system-wide coordination and oversight, monitor the transition toward increasingly autonomous AI models, expand the FCA’s AI Lab, enable the foundations for agentic finance, build an AI-enabled supervisory model, and develop a trusted public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service.
The review describes agentic finance as a financial ecosystem in which consumers and firms increasingly delegate financial tasks and decision-making to AI systems capable of recommending, initiating and, within agreed parameters, executing actions on their behalf.
Consumer protection and systemic considerations
The review concludes that while AI could improve financial inclusion and help address long-standing challenges such as the advice gap, it could also amplify fraud, cyber risks, consumer harm and market concentration.
It also warns that increasing reliance on a limited number of AI model developers, cloud providers and technology platforms could create new forms of systemic concentration risk across financial services.
The FCA said its existing principles-based regulatory framework, including the Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, has enabled it to respond flexibly to AI adoption. The regulator also confirmed that it plans to publish guidance on good and poor AI practices later this year following engagement with financial firms.
Why it matters
The Mills Review represents one of the most comprehensive forward-looking assessments by a financial regulator of how artificial intelligence could reshape retail financial services over the coming decade. Rather than focusing solely on today’s AI applications, it examines the implications of increasingly autonomous systems capable of participating directly in financial decision-making, consumer interactions and regulatory supervision.
For the digital asset industry, the report is notable for its discussion of agentic finance, AI-enabled supervision and future regulatory frameworks. As AI becomes increasingly embedded across payments, banking, lending, investments and other digital financial services—including emerging tokenised and digital asset ecosystems—the FCA’s roadmap provides an early indication of how financial regulators may adapt oversight to increasingly autonomous financial markets.
