The review sets out how AI could reshape retail financial services for consumers, firms, markets and regulators by 2030 and beyond.
Led by FCA executive director Sheldon Mills and commissioned by the Board, The Mills Review is the first work of its kind initiated by a regulator globally.
Drawing on views from across the financial services landscape, the report identifies 4 major AI‑driven shifts likely to impact retail financial services: the transformation of firm operations; the evolution of consumer journeys; the reshaping of competition and market power; and the amplification of fraud and cyber risks.
The report finds there is already consumer appetite for the use of agentic AI in personal finance, with research commissioned by the FCA showing that a fifth of people – equivalent to 11 million UK adults – are likely to use AI that can act autonomously within pre-set goals. But consumers in the survey are concerned about trust and control of AI.
The Review concludes that AI is likely to become a defining force in retail financial services, transforming how firms operate, how consumers make financial decisions and how markets function. While AI has the potential to improve access, personalisation and efficiency, it could also amplify risks associated with fraud, cyber security, consumer harm and market concentration.
Executive director Sheldon Mills said: ‘Artificial intelligence will transform financial services by 2030. It creates significant opportunities for consumers, firms and the wider economy. This report sets out a roadmap for how industry regulators and government can prepare for the next phase of AI-driven change in our world-leading financial services sector.‘
Key recommendations
The Mills Review also outlines 7 recommendations for the FCA Board and Executive to consider, which are as follows:
FCA response
Ashley Alder, Chair of the FCA, said: ‘The Board is enormously grateful to Sheldon for the rich, comprehensive report he’s delivered. His work anticipates the fundamental change agentic AI will bring to financial services. It highlights how consumers and firms can reap significant potential benefits as well how risks can be managed.
‘As is clear in the report, we need to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment and the principles-based, outcomes focussed approach we’ve taken on AI – relying on the Consumer Duty and Senior Managers Regime – has been critical to us doing so. The recommendations build on work the FCA has been doing – not least allowing firms to test their use of AI with us – and our own use of AI to be a smarter regulator, more efficient and effective.‘
Four shifts define the coming market
We see four systemic shifts that willreshape financial services to 2030.
1. AI will transform firms
Retail financial services firms have begun deploying AI for specific tasks, mostly keeping humans in the loop. This is changing. Firms are already piloting and rolling out use cases with greater autonomy, and by 2030 many could have moved significantly further along the autonomy spectrum, embedding AI into almost every function from customer support and underwriting to compliance, claims and product design. Forleading firms, AI may become the main method by which they process information, serve customers, and evidence outcomes.
As autonomy grows,the role of people within firms changes, from operators close to each decision, towards collaborators, approvers and, eventually, observers who monitor outcomes and step in when systems move outside agreed parameters. This is a substantial organisational shift,requiring new skills and a clearer account of what human oversight actually involves.
Firm governance will extend existing modelrisk managementto cover more complex systems and deeper reliance on third-party providers. Successful AI deployment should lift productivity and support economic growth, though the benefits willreach consumers only where firms remain accountable and markets stay competitive enough to pass them on.
2. Consumer journeys become agent-led
AI will reshape consumer financial journeys, with people increasingly delegating to AI applications that act on their behalf. Consumer demand is already emerging, suggesting a shift to agent-led journeys is credible.
Overtime, AI systems will move beyond offering information and recommendations towards trusted AI agents that can act continuously for consumers within agreed limits, providing ongoing financial management and optimising people’s financial lives. If done well, this could help consumers achieve more while doing less, addressing long-standing problems such as low switching, advice and protection gaps, and improving outcomes for people with lower financial capability. There are both benefits and risks – for example, hyper-personalisation could help better match products to needs, but also enable bias, opaque pricing and personalised manipulation.
Access to useful and reliable AI services,trust and control will ultimately define consumer uptake and outcomes. Consumers will need to be able to oversee, understand and challenge AI-driven decisions, especially when things go wrong. Unequal access to high-quality applications risks widening inclusion gaps – but welldesigned AI systems also present an opportunity to radically improve outcomes for those who need more support.
3. AI reshapes market power and competition
Effective competition can benefit consumers through lower costs, innovation and better products. But where itis impeded, or where there is significant market power or control of key inputs, it can be distorted,raising costs and lowering quality. AI has the potentialto drive greater beneficial competition in financial services, yetitis also likely to create significant dependencies on suppliers who hold market power over firms’ core operational capability.
AI could lower barriers to entry, enable new distribution channels and allow digitalnative firms to scale rapidly. AI may also provide new ways forincumbents to leverage data, trust and bargaining power with AI suppliers. Control of the AI-mediated customer interface may become a major source of market power. As consumers rely on agents to search, compare and transact,the owner of that AI layer may influence which products are visible, how choices are ranked and where value is captured, shifting the customer relationship away from financial services providers.
This control could take several forms, from operating-system assistants and general-purpose apps to aggregators and consumers’ own agents, each creating different competitive dynamics. Much will also depend on upstream technology markets, where competition among model providers, big tech and hyperscalers governs access to frontier capability, compute and data. Cost, concentration, vendorlock-in and sovereignty could all become criticalto entry, innovation and resilience.
For regulators, this blurs the perimeter. Under an activity-based approach, general-purpose tools could shape financial decisions and competition without clear oversight. Whetherthis influence falls inside or outside the perimeter will shape how competition and consumer protection work in practice.
4. Threats and defences both accelerate
The same capabilities that promise to help consumers will also serve those who seek to target and defraud them. By 2030, AI is likely to amplify fraud and cyber risks, making attacks faster, cheaper, more scalable and more persuasive – and at the same time harder to spot and stop. Deepfakes, synthetic identities and personalised social engineering are taking fraud and cyberrisks into a new era and changing how fraud and cyber-attacks are conducted. Existing weaknesses can be exploited far more quickly than before, and defenders will need to keep pace.
These risks extend across firms and platforms to paymentrails, identity systems and technology providers, and across borders. As consumers increasingly rely on AI agents to manage financial decisions and transactions,risk will spread more quickly across an increasingly interconnected model-based system.
The same technologies used to attack the system can also be used to protect it.
Defensive, supervisory and enforcement capability must evolve atleast as quickly as the threat. To remain effective, firms, regulators and their partners will need access to many ofthe same AI capabilities as those used by attackers. They will also need to share the right information with those best placed to act, when it matters and before harm escalates.
In January, the FCA launched a review into the implications of advanced AI on consumers, retail financial markets and regulators. The Review was led by Sheldon Mills and builds on the FCA’s existing work on AI. This includes its AI Discussion Paper, AI Sprint, and AI Lab including AI Live Testing and its groundbreaking Supercharged Sandbox supported by NVIDIA.
As part of The Mills Review, in April 2026, Yonder Consulting conducted a survey of more than 5,000 UK retail financial services consumers (PDF), defined as individuals holding a day-to-day bank account, such as a current or savings account.
Quotas were set to ensure the survey was representative of the population of UK retail finance service consumers on key demographics including age, gender, ethnicity, region, housing tenure and internet ability. As part of the survey, consumers were presented with a range of plausible near‑term use cases for AI in financial services. The findings show that 20% of consumers would be likely to use AI capable of acting autonomously within pre-set goals.
Running in parallel to this work, the FCA will launch an AI good and poor practice publication later this year. As part of this work, the regulator has engaged directly with firms to find out what is working well, where firms are facing challenges, and where further clarity would help. Find out more on how the FCA is engaging with firms to help shape its approach to AI.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
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