TL;DR:

• A global EY survey of 18,000 consumers across 23 countries found 49% had used AI in the past six months to help with savings and investment decisions, rising to 68% among Gen Z and 65% among millennials.
• Some 35% of the ~1,000 UK consumers polled had used AI for savings and investment, with 14% using it to protect personal financial data and 49% seeing it as useful for fraud detection; ChatGPT was the most popular tool per a parallel Lloyds study.
• The UK Financial Conduct Authority launched a review in January of AI’s implications for retail investors, and has warned that general-purpose tools like ChatGPT and Claude are not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or FSCS when used for financial decisions.

AI is moving from a novelty to a mainstream financial-decision tool faster than UK regulators expected, according to EY research that shows half of global consumers now use AI chatbots to support savings and investment choices — with Gen Z adoption running at 68%.

What the data shows

EY surveyed 18,000 consumers across 23 countries and found 49% had used AI for financial decisions in the past six months, with 37% saying they would find AI “very” or “extremely” helpful for personalised financial advice or automated financial decisions. UK-specific numbers from the ~1,000 UK respondents were lower on the headline figure: 35% had used AI for savings and investment decisions, 14% for personal data protection, and 49% believed AI would be helpful for fraud detection. ChatGPT leads on usage, with Google’s Gemini second, per a separate 5,000-person Lloyds Banking Group study.

EY global financial services AI co-leader Preetham Peddanagari framed the result as a trust question: “it is trust that will determine how far and how fast adoption grows”. Holly Mackay of consumer finance site Boring Money said AI is “a useful guide but consumers need to check the facts and seek help from other trusted sources”. Fidelity International’s Andrew Oxlade warned consumers often aren’t asking sufficiently broad questions, which means they don’t get complete or fully reliable answers.

The FCA position

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority opened a review of AI’s retail-market implications in January, looking at how AI could evolve for retail investors, regulators, firms and markets. Its position on general-purpose AI is pointed: tools like ChatGPT and Claude are not regulated, and advice from them is “not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or Financial Services Compensation Scheme”. The FCA recommends consumers check other trusted sources when making financial decisions. That statement effectively tells retail investors the safety net they assume exists for bank-originated advice does not apply when they paste “should I move my ISA into a global tracker” into ChatGPT.

Traditional financial help still dominates for serious decisions: Fidelity’s global survey shows 45% of UK retail investors use financial institutions and 40% rely on professional advisers. Asia Pacific investors show stronger AI adoption at 30%, compared to 21% in Europe.

Looking Forward

For UK banks and wealth managers, the EY and Lloyds data make the strategic choice concrete: either provide regulated, compliant AI-assisted advice inside their own channels, or watch consumers get the same answers for free from unregulated chatbots with no ombudsman recourse. Expect the FCA’s current review to produce tightened rules around disclosure, audit and model accountability for firms that deploy AI in retail advice journeys, with derivative impact on insurance, pensions and tax-advice use cases. Gen Z’s 68% adoption rate means the policy window is narrow.