UK Mulls Standardised Testing for AI in Banking After Regulatory Concerns

The UK government is considering introducing standardised testing for artificial intelligence models used by banks, following regulatory concerns about inadequate oversight of their deployment.

The proposal was put forward last month by Harriet Rees, chief information officer at Starling Bank, and submitted to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as policymakers assess how to strengthen safeguards around widely used AI systems.

Rees argued that independent evaluation would address gaps in current practices, where banks currently rely on their own internal checks without any shared benchmark. 'Lots of firms are using [AI models] and we can assume that [they] have done the necessary due diligence and, therefore, hopefully we’re happy,' she said.

The proposal follows warnings from the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority, which told lenders at meetings in October that their monitoring of AI models was 'not frequent enough'.