The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate how artificial intelligence shapes consumer financial decisions. The Mills Review anticipates firms and individuals will increasingly delegate choices to AI-from making agreements to executing transactions-while warning that existing risks around fraud, bias, and opaque advice could grow rapidly without coordinated oversight.
Sheldon Mills, who led the review, said AI can bridge advice gaps and support growth, but "AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust." The findings show one in five UK adults are already open to AI making financial decisions for them, especially when choices feel complex or high-stakes. Around 26% of the population trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for financial advice, often unaware these platforms offer no formal recourse or consumer protections.
Four areas of AI impact by 2030
The review identifies four domains it expects AI to reshape by the end of the decade: the transformation of firms, new consumer journeys, reshaped competitive dynamics, and amplified financial crime and cyber risk. As firms embed autonomous decision-making into customer-facing processes, the line between advisory and execution blurs. This shift demands a clearer understanding of AI for Finance across compliance, risk, and product teams.
Recommended regulatory actions
The review put forward several priority recommendations for the FCA Board. They aim to keep pace with a sector where AI agents could soon initiate and settle transactions without human intervention.
- Monitor transitions to autonomous AI models in financial services.
- Adapt and secure regulatory frameworks and perimeters.
- Strengthen system-wide coordination and oversight.
- Scale up the FCA's AI Lab to support innovation for agentic finance.
- Build and adopt an AI-enabled agentic supervisory model.
- Develop a trusted, public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service.
The FCA also announced it will publish an AI "good and poor practice publication" in late 2026, giving firms a clearer benchmark for responsible deployment.
Why this matters for finance professionals
The review signals that AI governance will become a hard requirement, not a voluntary best practice. For regulatory affairs specialists, the call to adapt regulatory frameworks means updated skills in model monitoring, explainability, and cross-system coordination will move from niche to necessary. Teams that wait for final rules before building internal expertise risk falling behind both competitors and the regulator's expectations.
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