The FCA has published the Mills Review into the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on retail financial services. It launched the review in January 2026.

The key message is that AI is moving from a back-office efficiency tool to a more autonomous layer in the delivery of regulated financial services. That shift will require careful analysis of authorisation, outsourcing, governance, consumer protection, financial promotions, data, cyber and accountability issues, particularly where firms deploy agentic AI tools that can act on behalf of firms or consumers.

What does the Review say?

Drawing on input from across the financial services landscape, the Review identifies four broad AI-driven shifts likely to reshape retail financial services:

• changes to firm operations;
• the evolution of consumer journeys;
• the reshaping of competition and market power; and
• the amplification of fraud, cyber and resilience risks. 

It also highlights consumer appetite for AI-enabled personal finance tools, with FCA-commissioned research indicating that around one fifth of UK adults may be likely to use AI that can act autonomously within pre-set goals. However, consumer concerns around trust, control, transparency and redress remain central.

Key recommendations of Review

• Secure and adapt the regulatory perimeter, including by considering whether existing regulatory boundaries remain appropriate as AI intermediaries and agentic finance models develop.
• Strengthen system-wide coordination and oversight, particularly where AI risks cut across financial services, technology, data, competition and cyber regimes.
• Monitor the transition to more autonomous models and adapt regulatory frameworks where necessary.
• Scale up the FCA's AI Lab to support safe AI model and system innovation in financial services.
• Enable the foundations for agentic finance, including work on trust, permissions, authentication, data access and consumer control.
• Build and adopt an AI-enabled agentic supervisory model, signalling that the FCA itself expects to use AI more actively in supervision and risk detection.
• Develop a trusted public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service to support consumer understanding and decision-making.

The Mills Review is a clear indication that the FCA sees AI, and particularly agentic AI, as a strategic regulatory priority for the rest of the decade. Firms need to apply existing regulatory duties to increasingly autonomous systems. That means focusing on governance, accountability, consumer outcomes, resilience and contractual controls now, while keeping a close eye on the FCA's promised good and poor practice guidance later this year.