UK Financial Regulator: AI Will Reshape Banking by 2030

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has published a report that describes artificial intelligence as a force capable of reshaping the entire financial services market by 2030. The document, already known as the Mills Review after its author, FCA executive director Sheldon Mills, lays out both the opportunities and the risks stemming from consumers' growing trust in AI when making decisions about money.

The report was prompted by data that alarmed the regulator itself. One in four consumers surveyed admit they already ask general-purpose chatbots about financial matters, often without realizing that such tools aren't covered by the formal consumer-protection mechanisms that apply to the regulated financial industry. That's a fundamental difference: a client who receives bad advice from a financial adviser has a route to complain and seek compensation, but there's no such recourse for advice from a chatbot.

Four areas of change

The FCA singles out four areas where AI's impact will be felt most: the transformation of financial firms themselves, the emergence of new customer service channels, shifting competitive dynamics in the market, and new risks tied to financial crime and cybersecurity. In each of these areas, the regulator sees potential for lower costs and wider access to services, alongside new sources of systemic risk.

The most sensitive issue concerns so-called autonomous AI agents, systems that operate within preset boundaries but make decisions without ongoing human oversight. According to the FCA, it's this model, rather than a simple advisory chatbot, that will drive change in the coming years. Consumers would entrust AI agents with managing their savings, choosing credit products, or optimizing an investment portfolio.

AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making and misleading or fabricated advice - Sheldon Mills, Executive Director, Financial Conduct Authority

Seven recommendations for the industry

Among the report's seven priority recommendations are ongoing monitoring of the market's shift toward autonomous AI agents, adapting regulatory frameworks and safety boundaries to the new reality, expanding the FCA's existing AI Lab, building an AI-supported supervision model on the regulator's own side, and creating a public service to support AI-based financial education. The final recommendation speaks directly to laying the groundwork for so-called agentic finance, finance run by autonomous agents.

The FCA says it will publish a separate document later this year describing good and bad practices among financial firms rolling out AI. It's meant to serve as a practical guide for banks, insurers and investment firms that are already testing AI tools in customer service, but doing so without unified standards.

AI will transform financial services by 2030. This report sets out a roadmap for the industry and regulators - Sheldon Mills, Executive Director, Financial Conduct Authority

Risk to smaller players

The report flags the risk of market concentration. If customers start entrusting financial decisions to AI agents built by a handful of large technology providers, traditional financial institutions could lose their direct relationship with customers to an AI-based intermediary layer. It's a scenario the FCA compares to the shift in market power that major online platforms triggered in retail.

On the other hand, the regulator sees AI as a chance to close the so-called advice gap, the situation in which millions of lower-income people can't afford traditional financial advice. Cheap, automated tools could, for the first time, give them access to personalized recommendations on saving or borrowing.

What it means for Poland

Although the report covers the UK market, its conclusions matter for Poland too, where banks and fintech companies have spent months testing their own AI-based tools for credit-worthiness analysis and customer service. The FCA's approach, which favors preparing regulatory frameworks ahead of time rather than reacting after the fact, could become a reference point for Poland's financial supervision and the Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF, Poland's financial supervision authority) as they develop their own guidelines on AI agents in banking.

For Polish consumers, the key issue is the same one the FCA identified: a growing tendency to ask general-purpose chatbots about financial matters without realizing that such advice comes with no consumer protection at all. Financial market experts note that education on this front should get ahead of regulation, since the habit of using free AI tools to ask about loans or investments is growing faster than awareness of their limitations.

Sources: UK Financial Regulator Publishes Landmark AI Review (jurist.org), AI to Redefine Financial Services: FCA (investmentexecutive.com)