FCA warns of major shakeup as AI agents meet tokenized money

FCA warns of major shakeup as AI agents meet tokenized money

The FCA’s vision for agentic AI points toward a financial system where programmable money and tokenized assets could play a much larger role.

Screenshot of table header that sets out how FCA sees operator activities may change as they move across the AI autonomy spectrum. Source: Financial Conduct Authority.

The acceleration of this shift has outpaced prior regulatory timelines, with more than 20 frontier models released since late 2025 alone.

“Firms are moving from systems that recommend actions to systems empowered and trained to take them, and consumers will soon gain agents that act on their behalf,” Mills said in the report’s foreword.

FCA research shows that 20% of UK adults are already open to letting AI make autonomous financial choices.

The settlement bottleneck

For these AI agents to execute multi-layered transaction strategies seamlessly, they require programmable, instantaneous settlement mechanisms. Traditional multi-day settlement latency remains an operational bottleneck.

Because systemic stablecoins and tokenized assets live natively on programmable ledger networks, they provide the friction-free, atomic settlement needed for automated protocols to move capital instantly without human clearance.

Governance and accountability risks

However, this automation introduces severe corporate governance risks regarding legal accountability. The review highlights growing industry anxiety over this ambiguity, noting that one CEO observed that the financial sector may eventually require a "Turing test" to accurately distinguish between human intent and autonomous algorithmic behavior in the market.

“The FCA’s Mills Review reinforces that firms should treat agentic AI as an accountability and governance issue now, while providing greater confidence to innovate responsibly as AI adoption accelerates,” Emma Banymandhub, CEO of The Payments Association, said in a statement. “AI has enormous potential for financial services, but realising that potential will depend on strong governance, clear accountability and maintaining consumer trust.”

Mills, who is leaving after eight years at the FCA, told The Financial Times ahead of the report’s release that managers would still need to be accountable for the actions of their AI models. “You need a human on the hook for what they’re doing,” he said.

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