This Week in Brief

The headline this week came from the FCA’s financial crime conference in London, where chief executive Nikhil Rathi warned that artificial intelligence is accelerating the scale and sophistication of financial crime faster than firms or regulators can keep up with. Sitting alongside that warning are two complementary stories: a Five Eyes joint advisory on agentic AI security, and a fresh GBST/lang cat survey showing 62% of UK advisers are now comfortable with agentic AI being embedded in their wealth platforms — provided the controls are right. On the supply side, the people who can actually build those controls are harder than ever to hire.

Key Developments

FCA Chief Warns AI is Accelerating Financial Crime

Speaking at the FCA’s financial crime conference in London on 14 May, chief executive Nikhil Rathi said AI is enabling criminals to operate faster, at greater scale and across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, exposing cyber security vulnerabilities at a pace never seen before. Crime groups are increasingly blending fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion and cyber-enabled crime, exploiting weaknesses between firms, regulators and systems. The FCA’s response is to lean into the same technology — investing in advanced network analytics and AI-driven monitoring tools, with early testing in the payments sector already identifying firms with potential money laundering risks earlier than traditional rule-based systems.

For IFAs, the immediate read-across is to AML procedures, source-of-funds work and ongoing client review. If the regulator is scaling AI-driven detection on its own side of the table, supervisory attention to the controls firms have in place for fraud risk and onboarding diligence is likely to follow. Now would be a sensible moment to revisit the firm’s financial crime risk assessment and make sure it explicitly covers AI-enabled threats.

62% of UK Advisers Comfortable With Agentic AI on Wealth Platforms

A survey of 178 UK financial advisers, carried out by the lang cat for platform technology firm GBST and published on 8 May, found that 62% are comfortable with agentic AI — meaning AI that takes autonomous actions rather than just answering questions — being deployed inside investment platforms. That is a markedly higher acceptance figure than recent FCA, PRA and Bank of England communications would suggest. The caveat is that adviser comfort comes with conditions: regulation is named as the primary pacing factor for the next two years, and advisers want tighter limits on autonomous decision-making, much more transparency over what the AI is doing, and capabilities built into core platform technology rather than bolted on afterwards. GBST sees the strongest near-term use cases in back-office administration rather than in front-of-client work — which lines up with what most adviser-tech vendors are already doing in 2026.

Five Eyes Issue First Joint Agentic AI Security Guidance

On 1 May the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, alongside its counterparts in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, published a 30-page joint guidance document titled “Careful Adoption of Agentic AI Services.” It is the first time the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance has issued coordinated policy on a single AI risk surface, and it identifies five distinct risk categories — privilege, design and configuration, behavioural, structural and accountability risks.

The practical implication for adviser firms is straightforward: any tool that takes autonomous actions on the firm’s behalf — compliance agents, automated client correspondence, trade surveillance, anything that touches client data without an adviser in the loop — needs to be procured with the same rigour as any other piece of regulated infrastructure. The guidance is expected to be cited in UK procurement and regulator workstreams over the coming months. Worth a glance before signing the next AI vendor contract.

Dynamic Planner Appoints CTO to Lead Agentic AI Push

Adviser-tech firm Dynamic Planner — used by a large share of UK advice practices for risk profiling, suitability and asset allocation — has appointed Rory McLaren as chief technology officer and Piers Lawson as chief architect, with an explicit mandate to accelerate the firm’s agentic AI capabilities. McLaren joins from Kaizen Reporting, where he authored that firm’s AI manifesto, and brings more than 20 years in regulated financial services technology. Ian McEwan has also been hired as chief revenue officer.

For the firms that already use Dynamic Planner as part of their daily workflow, this is a clear signal that one of the core pieces of adviser infrastructure is moving deliberately toward systems that can take autonomous actions inside the suitability and review process — not just calculate or recommend. Expect more concrete product announcements over the next year.

AI Skills Shortage Bites: Nine-Month Hires and 49% Pay Premiums

A survey of UK financial services firms, conducted by AWS and Harvey Nash and reported on 11 May, found that the average time to fill an AI or digital role in financial services has risen from 5.5 months in 2025 to nine months in 2026. The salary premium paid for the right AI-skilled candidate is now 49%, and 61% of firms cite AI and digital skills shortages as the single biggest barrier to expanding their use of AI. For larger firms, this is a hiring problem; for smaller advice practices, the read-across is more strategic. Building in-house AI capability is becoming meaningfully harder and more expensive, which strengthens the case for buying tooling from specialist providers rather than trying to assemble a bespoke stack from scarce internal talent.

From the Trade Press

Note: direct login to FT Adviser and Professional Adviser was not available this session — items below are sourced via web search across the trade press.

  • “FCA warns AI is accelerating financial crime risks” — Money Marketing’s coverage of Nikhil Rathi’s 14 May speech, in which the FCA chief executive warned that AI is enabling crime “at a speed and scale the likes of which we’ve never seen.” Money Marketing, 14 May 2026

  • “Dynamic Planner strengthens AI leadership team” — Reports the appointment of Rory McLaren as CTO and Piers Lawson as chief architect, with an explicit agentic AI mandate. Money Marketing, 11 May 2026

  • “Dan Marsh: AI won’t replace advisers, but it could ‘supercharge’ them” — Opinion piece arguing that with nearly 30 million UK adults already turning to chatbots for money advice, the role of the human adviser becomes more important, not less. Money Marketing, 14 May 2026

  • “Reassured debuts SAINT.AI to cut non-disclosure risk” — The UK’s largest life broker launches a generative AI tool, built with FOIL AI and Microsoft, that compares call transcripts against insurer records to flag medical non-disclosure in protection applications. Money Marketing, May 2026

  • “Millions turn to AI for mortgage advice despite concerns” — Almost a quarter of Britons have used AI tools for mortgage guidance, but only 7% said they were “very confident” in the accuracy of what they were told. Useful context for adviser conversations with clients who have already consulted ChatGPT before coming in. Money Marketing, 11 May 2026

What to Watch

The FCA’s CP26/10 consultation on simplifying advice rules closes for responses on 22 May — one week from now. If your firm has a view on replacing fixed annual suitability reviews with more flexible periodic reviews, the submission window is closing fast. Separately, the Mills Review on AI in retail financial services is still due to report to the FCA Board this summer. With Nikhil Rathi this week explicitly framing AI as a financial-crime accelerator, the tone of the Mills recommendations is unlikely to be neutral.

Sources: FCA, Money Marketing, Resultsense, IT Brief UK, The Register, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, web search. Compiled 15 May 2026.