Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden says existing frameworks were not built for autonomous agents, as central bank considers market-wide kill switches The Bank of England has signalled the need for bespoke AI regulation to contain risks to the financial system posed by increasingly capable agentic systems, marking a potential shift in its approach to overseeing the technology. After years of insisting that existing frameworks were sufficient to mitigate AI risks, Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden said rapid developments in areas such as agentic payments and trading had exposed potential gaps that could require a more sophisticated regulatory response. Agentic AI refers to systems that can make decisions and operate autonomously. “Our frameworks were not built to contemplate autonomous agents, and relying on a human in the loop for all agent actions is unlikely to be realistic,” Breeden told the European Central Bank Forum on central banking in Portugal on Tuesday. Breeden said the Bank of England is considering whether banks need “enhanced recovery” for core systems, which would allow one bank to take over another’s basic functions during a disruption. Other measures under consideration include fresh guardrails and circuit breakers or kill switches “that would limit or stop trading market-wide if faulty AI models cause market meltdown.” According to a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance survey, 52% of finance firms are already using agentic AI. In commerce, agents are typically used to recommend products, while in trading, firms mostly deploy autonomous AI for lower-risk operational tasks — though Breeden cautioned that could change quickly. “If AI agents respond similarly to the same prompts or triggers, they could amplify volatility in stress – especially if their objectives drift from original goals or public policy objectives,” she said. Regulators and global standard-setting bodies have repeatedly warned about the risks posed by the rollout of AI across the financial sector since Anthropic released Mythos, a model that analysts say could introduce significant cybersecurity challenges to the banking industry. The Financial Stability Board earlier in June called for tighter safeguards against the risks of AI agents, which it said posed a distinct challenge to human…

Recruits will join a 1,000-strong AI team ahead of chief executive Charlie Nunn’s new multi-year strategy announcement Lloyds Banking Group has launched a recruitment drive for 300 tech experts to work on artificial intelligence, weeks before chief executive Charlie Nunn announces a strategic plan for the 261-year-old lender. The bank said it intends the recruits to work on its use and development of agentic AI by September, referring to autonomous AI models that can plan and execute tasks with minimal human oversight. While the hiring drive will increase Lloyds’ headcount for now, the group did not rule out that broader adoption of AI could lead to job cuts in the future. “AI will reshape how organisations are structured. It will change roles and how we work, and we are investing in training for colleagues through that transition,” said Trystan Davies, group head of data and AI science at Lloyds. In January, Nunn acknowledged the bank would have to “reduce some jobs in some areas” owing to AI. Last month, Standard Chartered announced 7,000 job cuts, due in part to AI. Its chief executive, Bill Winters, later apologised for describing the move as “replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital.” The initiative comes as major global banks adopt AI to simplify processes and cut costs. Santander’s Spanish parent said it aims to save more than £400 million by 2028 through automation and hopes to generate another £300 million in additional income, with all 185,000 staff worldwide — including about 15,000 in the UK — to be given access to AI tools. Davies said the AI cohort would be deployed across a range of projects, including identifying and preventing scams and fraud, as well as internal applications such as searching and distilling documents in the HR department. A key focus will be making online banking more accessible and personalised, allowing customers to interrogate their spending habits and ask plain-language questions about their finances, including which investment or savings products might suit their circumstances. “It results in a much better customer experience because our systems are kind of geared up in the right way,” Davies said. The recruits will form part of a 1,000-strong AI team that also includes retrained Lloyds staff. The team will deploy existing large language models such as Anthropic’s Claude and build on top of public LLMs such as Google’s Gemini to the bank’s own specifications. Lloyds’ AI programme has already delivered financial gains, with generative AI providing a £50 million boost to its balance sheet last year. The group expects a £100 million benefit this year through its growing use of agentic AI models. However, research suggests some UK banks are becoming reliant on AI faster than they are preparing for outages. KPMG’s latest financial services sentiment survey found that while 93% of UK bank executives believed they could keep operating during a significant outage, only 47% had carried out a single test around AI disruption, and 26% had not conducted any. “Firms have invested time and money, but without regular, robust testing, how do you know what you’re doing is working? And, crucially, how do you prove your resilience to the regulator, customers and stakeholders?” said Rob Smith, UK head of regulatory and risk advisory at KPMG…