UK banks must act like big tech companies rather than startups if they want to replicate the success achieved by US banks using artificial intelligence (AI).
According to research from Evident, which tracks the adoption of artificial intelligence in financial services, US banks are leading the way. In his last banking AI adoption indexSix of the ten largest banks are in the United States.
JPMorganChase leads the way, followed by fellow US giants Capital One, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.
In the UK, the top ten included HSBC, Australia's CommBank, Switzerland's UBS and the Royal Bank of Canada.
It is clear that these leading banks in AI maturity have pulled away from their peers in 2025, consolidating previous gains and increasingly realizing the return on investment of their AI spending.
The 10 largest banks were found to be accelerating their AI adoption more than twice as fast as the rest of the banks. Investments in AI turn into business value.
Obvious CEO Alexandra Musavizadeh warned that banks that fall behind may never be able to recover their positions. “We're at a point now where there will be a point where you, as a lagging bank, won't be able to catch up,” she said.
Mousavizadeh suggested that British banks should be more like Big Tech when it comes to their AI adoption if they want to catch up with their American counterparts.
Talent is the key to achieving this goal, she told Computer Weekly. “As we all know, there is war on talentand this intensifies as the race for implementation of enterprise AI is increasing,” Musavizadeh said.
“Your talent is your destiny,” she added. “That's always been true, but I think it's even more true now because we're at this turning point where there's been a couple of years of experimentation and testing with use cases that are feasible, but it's a very superficial level.”
The Evident Index found that no UK bank is in the top 10 for artificial intelligence.
Mousavizadeh said that there are currently examples of projects that go much deeper, and some of the leading banks are ahead of them.
“The tectonic plates are shifting right now. It's all about scale and rebuilding the organization so it's ready to fully leverage generative AI and agent AI,” she said.
Change requires a different way of thinking, one that goes deeper into the business.
“We've gone from having CEOs and tech leadership teams fully engaged and making sure that AI is a very clear priority, but it has now dropped to a level where line of business leaders are thinking about reshaping the business with AI.”
That requires a different way of thinking, she said, because people like employees at big tech companies command a high price.
“You need artificial intelligence product managers and AI thinking from big tech companies or academia. That's where the battle is because these people are very, very expensive and banks are trying to get their hands on this talent,” Mousavizadeh said.
She said there was a 26% increase in the number of AI specialists at banks, which was more pronounced in larger organizations.
Part of the problem in the UK, she said, is that while there is AI talent and plenty of fintech startups developing AI, enterprise experience with AI has lagged compared to the US.
“In terms of proximity to big tech talent, US banks have an advantage. [has a] there's a very strong startup community, but it's not the talent they need to grow their business, Mousavizadeh said.
