The Mills Review: AI and the future of retail financial services

Key Findings

• — Around 26% of UK adults trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice, with limited awareness that formal routes to recourse will not apply.
• — When these tools are used for financial advice, only around two in five people correctly identify the level of protection available; a majority misunderstand it or are unsure.
• — Among AI users, 75% trust AI to explain things clearly and 71% to provide useful guidance, but only 23% trust it to avoid misleading information and 21% to handle personal information responsibly; about 28% strongly trust tools like ChatGPT to provide accurate information.
• — 20% of all adults and 28% of existing AI users responded positively to the most advanced concepts of delegating financial decisions to AI. Demand was strongest for complex, high-stakes choices: debt advice, pensions and investments.
• — The review says general-purpose tools could shape financial decisions without clear oversight, blurring the activity-based regulatory perimeter, and recommends securing and adapting the perimeter rather than creating AI-specific regulation.

Methodology Notes

147-page PDF (pdfinfo CreationDate 2026-07-05). The FCA press release is dated 06/07/2026 in UK format, which is 6 July 2026. Consumer evidence: Yonder Consulting online survey of 5,026 UK adults, nationally representative, after eight FCA-run focus groups in London and Leeds. Survey and focus-group annexes are in the report. Most of the document is about the sector and regulation; the participant-facing material is the consumer-reliance and recourse evidence summarised above.

Sources