Britain should consider whether large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini ought to be regulated as they increasingly influence how consumers make financial decisions, a senior official at the Financial Conduct Authority has said.
Sheldon Mills, an executive director at the FCA, argued that the existing rulebook will have to evolve as firms lean on a small number of tech providers, a concentration he warned could create system-wide risk. It is a notable intervention from a regulator that has, until now, mostly stuck to the UK’s pro-innovation, principles-based line.
The concern Mills is pointing at is specific rather than abstract. More than a quarter of UK consumers, he noted, already trust tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini for financial advice, often without realising that the protections wrapped around regulated financial services do not extend to those systems. People are taking money decisions on the strength of software that sits entirely outside the perimeter the FCA polices.
That gap is the crux of the argument. When a regulated adviser gives poor guidance, a consumer has recourse; when a general-purpose chatbot does the same, the lines of responsibility are far less clear.
