The UK's financial services watchdog is calling on AI providers to issue disclaimers for services that provide financial advice to consumers via agentic AI.
Editorial
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In a speech at a Bloomberg event, Jessica Rusu, FCA chief data, information and intelligence officer, called for better consumer protection and regulation of financial advice produced by large language models (LLM) and agentic AI.
"Consumers are turning to general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, for financial information and advice, while regulated firms are beginning to integrate their services into AI platforms," said Rusu.
While this can significantly widen access to financial tools and information, it can also blur the boundary between regulated and unregulated activity, and the protections consumers receive.
"Four in five less-experienced investors aged 18-40 have used AI to help with investing, but only 40% of consumers correctly recognise that there is no recourse if something goes wrong after acting on advice from a general-purpose AI tool," said Rusu.
"Through InvestSmart and the FCA Firm Checker, we already help consumers understand the protections they have. But warnings may be more effective at the point where AI-generated financial information is delivered. So we are calling on AI providers to help consumers understand the limits of financial information and advice generated by their models through clear, proportionate and consistent disclaimers," said Rusu.
The comments were welcomed by industry participants, however, some have called for the FCA to go further. For example, Amal Jolly, CEO of Saturn, an AI provider in the financial advisory space, said that inaction could lead to consumers suffering "serious financial harm".
A research paper issued by Saturn found that AI chatbots are giving out inaccurate financial advice 57% of the time. "They make errors, their responses are inconsistent and there is no clear route to redress for people misled by their outputs," said Jolly.
With personal AI agents, the chatbots provide tailored responses and will not juist advise but act on people's behalf.
“The FCA is right to embrace AI innovation, but consumer protection must evolve just as quickly. If AI is effectively guiding people’s financial decisions, it needs appropriate regulatory oversight, clear accountability and meaningful consumer protections," said Jolly.
“Simply asking big tech companies to put disclaimers on their AI-generated financial advice is not enough. The regulator and Government need to act before consumers suffer serious harm.”