HM Treasury’s AI Champions publish plan to accelerate safe AI adoption across UK financial services

HM Treasury’s AI Champions for financial services, Harriet Rees, Group Chief Information Officer at Starling and Dr Rohit Dhawan, Head of AI at Lloyds Banking Group, have today published their Financial Services AI Adoption Plan, which they have developed following engagement with industry, government and regulators.

The plan sets out a series of recommendations aiming to accelerate safe AI adoption at scale, improving outcomes for consumers and businesses and strengthening the UK’s position as a global leader in AI‑enabled financial services.

The recommendations focus on:

• Improving regulatory clarity and accessibility to help firms adopt AI safely and with confidence.

• Ensuring regulation keeps pace with evolving consumer trends and the growing role of AI in financial guidance and advice, supporting innovation while maintaining consumer protection.

• Strengthening resilience through an industry-led third-party AI assurance scheme, including enhanced incident-sharing mechanisms and accelerated implementation of the Critical Third Party (CTP) regime.

• Building the future talent pipeline and workforce capabilities needed to support an AI-enabled financial services sector.

• Establishing the trust framework needed to support the safe adoption of agentic payments and unlock future innovation in agentic financial services

The Plan also highlights broader priorities for the government, including strengthening the UK’s sovereign AI capabilities, enhancing national resilience and improving cross-sector coordination to support long-term competitiveness.

The AI Adoption Plan, including specific recommendations, is available online here: gov.uk/government/publications/ai-adoption-plan-financial-services.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said:

“AI is the defining technology of our generation, critical to our national security and to our economic future. The role of the active and strategic state is not to step back from the challenges, but to step up.

“In my Mais lecture I set out a serious plan for AI sovereignty, backing British companies to compete and win, and the AI Adoption Plan is central to achieving this across the financial services sector and establishing the UK as the fastest adopter of AI in the G7.”

Harriet Rees, Group CIO of Starling said: “Throughout my engagement with industry as AI champion, the message I received was clear. Financial services firms are motivated to adopt AI at scale and to take a world-leading position. There’s broad agreement that we have the regulatory foundations to do this safely and that we now need to move forward with greater clarity, focus and ambition.

We need to achieve a better balance between the AI-based tools that regulated entities can offer to their clients and those operating outside the regulatory perimeter. This will ensure consumers benefit from the finance sector’s expertise and the huge opportunities AI offers. 

We need to focus our ambition to take leading positions in specific areas such as agentic payments, where we have the capability and the digitised customer base we need to solve today’s problems with tomorrow’s technology.

And finally, the UK must ensure firms can access the very best AI capabilities and infrastructure, whether on home soil or through strategic global relations, so they can continue to innovate at pace. Together, these steps will cement the UK financial services sector’s position as a global AI leader.” 

Rohit Dhawan, Head of AI and Advanced Analytics at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “The UK has a world-leading financial services sector and thriving technology ecosystem, giving us a unique opportunity to harness AI to drive economic growth and improve outcomes for consumers and businesses.

“These recommendations are designed to accelerate the safe adoption of AI across financial services by providing greater clarity, building trust and strengthening the foundations needed for firms to innovate at scale. By working together, industry, government and regulators can unlock the full potential of AI to ensure the UK remains a global leader in AI-enabled financial services.”

Harriet Rees and Dr Rohit Dhawan were appointed by HM Treasury as Financial Services AI Champions in January 2026. 

The recommendations come as financial institutions increasingly deploy AI across customer service, operations, risk management and fraud prevention, creating opportunities to improve productivity, resilience and customer outcomes.

ENDS

Lucy Cafferkey, Head of Media Relations at Starling Bank 

media@starlingbank.com / 07951681557

Notes

About Starling

Starling is a financial technology group on a mission to empower people and small businesses around the world to be good with money. In the UK, Starling’s award-winning, fully-licensed bank provides personal, business and joint current accounts to millions of customers. Internationally, Engine by Starling provides the Group’s proprietary technology platform to likeminded banks as a SaaS proposition. Headquartered in London, Starling has 12 offices located around the world, including Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester in its home market. 

About Lloyds Banking Group

With 28 million customers, we’re proud to be the UK’s biggest digital bank. Our services span retail and commercial banking, insurance and long-term savings, delivered through trusted brands including Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows.

Our purpose is Helping Britain Prosper. For more than 320 years, we’ve served households and businesses across the UK. Today, we’re transforming how we do that. We’ve invested more than £4bn in our digital transformation, and we’re just getting started. That means building smarter, more resilient tech, expanding our use of AI, and creating seamless experiences for a digital-first Britain.