Supercharging the digital sandbox: how we're collaborating with Nvidia to accelerate AI innovation

FCA strategy

At the FCA, we are evolving. We've set out a bold 5-year strategy to deepen trust, rebalance risk, support growth and improve lives.

We’re focusing on 4 key priorities, one of which is to become a smarter, more adaptive regulator. A regulator that supports innovation, leverages technology, and drives growth while delivering for consumers and markets.

In a fast-moving landscape, our job is not just to keep up. It’s to lead.

Supporting growth and UK competitiveness

The UK is already a global FinTech leader, having experienced significant growth over the past decade. This growth peaked in 2021, when the sector raised a record $18 billion in funding.

We know that regulation plays a key role in enabling growth. Our regulatory sandbox[4], launched over 10 years ago, helps firms navigate the UK, fostering an environment where good ideas thrive, where firms can innovate, and where consumers benefit.

We are working closely with Government and industry to evolve our approach, to ensure the UK remains the best place to develop and deploy financial technologies, including AI.

AI Lab

That brings me to our AI Lab.

In January, we launched the FCA's AI Lab to deepen our understanding of the risks and opportunities AI presents to consumers and markets, and its real-world implications.

This is not just an internal project.

It's a commitment to supporting industry with AI, a Lab that acknowledges that AI is evolving, and embraces experimentation, learning and testing.

The AI Lab features 4 zones: the AI Sprint, the AI Input Zone, the AI Spotlight, and the Supercharged Sandbox, and I’m going to guide you through that Lab now, including the details on our big announcement on our partnership with Nvidia.

Firstly, getting AI right requires engagement. Engagement with think tanks, academics, industry, investors, and consumers. The AI Sprint, held in person over 2 days, brought together regulators, technologists and industry leaders to envisage how AI will impact financial services, and inform our regulatory approach to AI. This engagement formed our outcome-based approach to AI regulation. 

The AI Input Zone creates space to share views on what are likely to be the most transformative AI use cases in financial services – for example, in market monitoring, fraud detection, consumer financial inclusion, and agentic AI, and how effective our current regulatory framework is and how we may need to adapt in the future to enable beneficial innovation.

The feedback we received showed strong support for an outcome and principles-based approach to AI. We heard that introducing a separate AI-specific framework wouldn’t be helpful at this stage.

We will continue to rely on our existing frameworks, like the Consumer Duty[5] and the Senior Managers Regime,[6] to avoid introducing additional regulations for AI.

But we also heard that firms want practical support in how they can apply existing frameworks to AI. 

And that brings us to the next component: the AI Spotlight, which highlights practical use cases across the sector. We invited innovators to present their experiments with AI in financial services and showcase their solutions.

I am often asked to share examples of what good looks like.

Therefore, I’m pleased to unveil the FCA's AI Spotlight digital repository[7], an interactive platform where you can explore real-world AI solutions in financial services.  

Users can browse a wide range of innovators, filter by themes or use cases, and build custom collections aligned to cross-cutting topics of interest - such as explainability, fraud detection, or sustainability.

The repository is part of the FCA's AI Lab and supports our commitment to enable safe and responsible AI adoption in UK financial services.  

AI Live Testing

We’re also going further.

In April, we announced the next step in experimentation in the AI Lab – our AI Live Testing. 

This is novel – AI Live Testing will provide firms the opportunity to test newly developed AI solutions with the regulator during the product development lifecycle.

It allows firms and the FCA to work together to test AI models, in a live and safe environment, enabling firms to receive appropriate regulatory support and comfort. 

The goal is to build a shared understanding of how to evaluate and deploy AI responsibly in financial services – especially in consumer-facing applications. 

We are seeking views from firms, via our engagement paper[8], about how this service can help them to deploy safe and responsible AI.

Just a heads-up: the consultation is closing this week – so if you want to have your say, now’s the time.

Closing remarks

I set out to tell you the story of a regulator that not only understands technology, but leverages it internally and externally.

We are committed to leveraging technology to improve our operations.

We are continuing to digitise and simplify our authorisation[10] forms. 

We are decommissioning legacy data returns and optimising the data collections journey.  We’re streamlining the Handbook and moving towards a machine-readable version. 

We’ve launched our new digital portal MyFCA[11] to manage core interactions with us all in one place.

We are using AI to assist staff with intelligence gathering and caseflow management.

And now, the FCA’s Supercharged Digital Sandbox, Powered by NayaOne[12] and supercharged by Nvidia[13], will strengthen the UK’s position as a Global FinTech Leader, aligned with the UK Government’s growth agenda and AI Opportunities Action Plan.

It’s a chance to show why the UK remains the most attractive destination for financial services start-ups, helping to draw top global talent in AI, reinforcing our leadership among global financial regulators and central banks, positioning the UK at the forefront of driving innovation in AI.

The FCA is here to help make that happen.

Because when it comes to innovation, we believe in regulation with purpose.