On 6 July 2026 the Financial Conduct Authority published what it describes as a landmark review into the impact of artificial intelligence on retail financial services, led by Sheldon Mills. The Mills Review examines how AI is being deployed across consumer-facing products, customer interactions, advice, and credit decisions, and sets out the FCA's regulatory expectations for firms operating in these spaces. It follows the FCA's broader 2025 strategy setting outcomes and metrics to 2030. The framing is striking from the outset: the third sentence of the executive summary states that "the central shift is from human-led, episodic financial activity towards services that are AI-enabled, continuous and delegated." The review identifies four systemic shifts reshaping financial services, an autonomy spectrum for human involvement in AI roles, and five models for AI-mediated retail financial services — only one of which retains the bank as the primary consumer interface. On the regulatory architecture, the FCA's position is clear: the existing regime is considered sufficiently flexible to accommodate changing AI-driven business models, with clarifications on SMR and Consumer Duty on the cards rather than wholesale new regulation, though the FCA signals it will need to increase its monitoring of system-wide and structural market risks.
The review also surfaces important data points for firms building their own analysis: £300 billion sitting in low-interest savings accounts, and one in five UK adults already open to AI making financial decisions on their behalf. The Mills Review does not explore tail scenarios — a wider societal backlash against AI, divergence between economies that own AI models versus those that merely access them, or fast take-off towards AGI or ASI — making it most useful as a well-evidenced central case rather than a full scenario set.
