FCA Sets Out Priorities for AI Use Across Financial Services

The Financial Conduct Authority has set out how it expects financial firms to approach expanding use of artificial intelligence, stressing consumer outcomes, clear accountability and operational resilience. In a 19 October speech, Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, information and intelligence officer, said the regulator’s joint survey with the Bank of England found that 86% of firms use AI.

The FCA said AI is already changing how firms analyse, trade, monitor and make decisions in wholesale markets. It said its response includes testing, assurance, monitoring and surveillance with industry, and that it is embedding six recommendations from the Mills Review into live work. The regulator also said it had published observations on good and poor practice from firm testing.

For retail investors, the speech highlighted a boundary problem: consumers may obtain financial information from general-purpose AI tools without recognizing that regulated-product protections may not apply. The FCA said it is calling on AI providers to use clear, proportionate and consistent disclaimers and will build on existing investor-protection work through its AI Lab and an IOSCO TechSprint.

Why it matters

For trading platforms and brokers, the message is that AI-led features still need governance, human oversight, escalation triggers and tested fallbacks. For traders, AI-generated research, support or investing information should not be treated as regulated advice merely because it appears inside a financial workflow.

What to watch next

Watch for the FCA’s good-and-poor-practice material, the joint FCA and Bank of England survey, and further work on a framework for agentic finance. Firms deploying automated trading, support or surveillance tools may also watch for guidance on incident and near-miss reporting.