FCA Mills Review: What It Says About AI in Retail Financial Services

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published the Mills Review, titled "AI and the future of retail financial services", on 6 July 2026. It was led by FCA executive director Sheldon Mills at the request of the FCA Board and looks at how AI could reshape retail financial services by 2030 and beyond. This guide summarises what the FCA’s review page and press release say. It is general information, not legal advice, and we have not read the full report. If you work in a regulated firm, our guide to the FCA Consumer Duty covers the existing rules the review builds on.

What the review is and is not

The Mills Review is advice to the FCA Board and Executive. It sets out seven recommendations for them to consider, and the FCA has not said it will adopt them. The pages we read give no implementation dates, new rules, new guidance or enforcement changes. The review is best read as a direction of travel rather than as a rulebook. An engagement paper ran from 26 January to 24 February 2026 as part of the evidence gathering, and the review also draws on feedback from firms, trade bodies, consumer groups, technology providers and international stakeholders, commissioned research, focus groups and a survey of more than 5,000 UK financial services consumers.

The four shifts the FCA describes

The FCA’s press release says the review identifies four major shifts for retail financial services: changes to how firms operate, changes to consumer journeys, changes to competition and market power, and greater fraud and cyber risk. It describes a move from human-led services toward AI-enabled, continuous and delegated services, where AI may recommend actions, start transactions and carry out decisions within limits that a customer agrees.

On consumers, the FCA says a fifth of UK adults, about 11 million people, are likely to use AI that can act autonomously within pre-set goals. Surveyed consumers were concerned about trust and control. The review concludes that AI could improve access, personalisation and efficiency, including by helping with gaps in advice and protection, but could also amplify fraud, cyber risk, consumer harm and market concentration.

The seven recommendations

The FCA’s pages give the titles of the recommendations, not the detail behind each one:

• Secure and adapt the regulatory perimeter.
• Strengthen system-wide coordination and oversight.
• Monitor the transition to autonomous models and adapt regulatory frameworks.
• Scale up the FCA’s AI Lab.
• Enable the foundations for agentic finance.
• Build and adopt an AI-enabled agentic supervisory model.
• Develop a trusted, public-interest, AI-enabled financial capability service.

Some of these are about the FCA’s own tools and supervision, and others are about the boundaries of regulation and coordination across the system. The detail of each sits in the full report, which we have not summarised.

What the FCA says it will do

The press release quotes FCA Chair Ashley Alder saying the FCA needs to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment, and credits the FCA’s principles-based, outcomes-focused approach, which relies on the Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers Regime. The FCA says it will launch a publication on good and poor practice in AI later this year, drawing on its direct engagement with firms, and points to existing work including its AI Lab, AI Live Testing and the Supercharged Sandbox.

What this may mean for firms

Because the review points to the Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers Regime as the current framework, firms using AI in customer-facing work are already working within those rules. Our article on AI compliance training for FCA, Central Bank and ESMA-regulated firms looks at training expectations more broadly.

Our suggestions

These are our own suggestions, not FCA guidance. Keep a list of where AI influences customer outcomes in your firm. Ask who is accountable for each use. Watch for the FCA’s good and poor practice publication, and compare it with your current approach when it appears. Treat the seven recommendations as a prompt for horizon scanning rather than a compliance checklist.

What the sources do not say

The review pages do not say whether or when the Board will respond to each recommendation, and they give no proposed rule changes. We have not read the full PDF, so we do not describe what each recommendation involves, the survey results beyond the headline figure, or the international comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Are the Mills Review recommendations rules?

No. They are recommendations for the FCA Board and Executive to consider.

Who led the review?

FCA executive director Sheldon Mills.

Is new FCA guidance coming?

The FCA says it will launch a publication on good and poor AI practice later this year. It has not announced new rules in the pages we read.

Does the review change the Consumer Duty?

The pages we read do not say so. The FCA points to the Consumer Duty as part of its existing approach.

Next steps

Browse our CPD resources to keep your team informed, and read the full Mills Review on the FCA website before drawing conclusions for your firm.