The Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) is highlighting a new collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) focused on strengthening how learning from artificial intelligence (AI) experimentation is captured, shared, and translated into capability across the financial services ecosystem.
The collaboration builds on the FCA AI Lab’s work to support firms exploring and testing AI through initiatives such as the Supercharged Sandbox and AI Spotlight. As AI adoption accelerates, the focus increasingly shifts from experimentation alone to ensuring that insights from real-world use cases contribute to wider understanding and capability across the sector.
Through this collaboration, the FCA and CFTE will connect live experimentation with structured insight and capability-building, helping ensure that learning does not remain isolated within individual firms, but contributes to shared understanding across the financial system. The objective is to support responsible innovation at scale, strengthening AI literacy and improving the maturity of AI-enabled propositions while preserving regulatory independence.
The collaboration brings together the FCA AI Lab’s regulatory insight and experience engaging with innovators, alongside CFTE’s work as a global platform for building capabilities in finance and technology.
From experimentation to shared learning
As part of the collaboration, the FCA and CFTE will deliver a set of complementary initiatives designed to support innovators at different stages of development and to amplify learning beyond individual cohorts:
The AI Lab Supercharged Academy, a capability-building programme supporting AI-led innovators to strengthen entrepreneurial execution, AI understanding, and readiness to engage with financial institutions and regulators.
The AI in Finance Observatory, an initiative bringing together insights and real-world AI use cases from across the FCA AI Lab ecosystem to support structured understanding of how AI is being applied in financial services.
Industry engagement and knowledge-sharing activities, contributing insights and lessons learned from UK AI experimentation to global discussions on AI in financial services.
Together, these initiatives aim to strengthen the pipeline of responsible innovators, improve AI literacy across the sector, and support a more informed and resilient approach to AI adoption in financial services.
“Building on our work through the AI Lab, this collaboration with CFTE will help turn AI experiments into practical learning that firms can use to build capability to adopt AI safely and responsible. It will also allow us to support more firms.”
Colin Payne, Head of Innovation, FCA
“CFTE is pleased to collaborate with the FCA on this initiative. The FCA has taken a leading role in engaging with AI innovation in financial services. Our role is to support that work by helping translate experimentation into structured learning and capability, enabling firms and stakeholders to better understand how AI is being applied in practice and to learn from those experiences.”
Tram Anh Nguyen, Co-Founder of CFTE
Supporting responsible innovation
The FCA AI Lab adds a dedicated artificial intelligence focus to the FCA’s Innovation Services, supporting firms as they develop and test AI-enabled solutions while deepening the FCA’s understanding of the risks and opportunities AI presents for markets and consumers.
Through this collaboration, the FCA and CFTE will work in a practical and proportionate manner to ensure that insights from live experimentation and ecosystem engagement are captured and shared for the benefit of firms, regulators, and the wider financial services community, without implying regulatory approval or endorsement.
