The Bank of England has published its report "Machine Learning in UK Financial Services". The report sets out its findings, following a survey of around a hundred regulated firms in the UK. It highlights the growing use of machine learning, especially in insurance, and the challenges of explainability, legacy systems, the skills gap and regulatory uncertainty. The number of UK financial services firms using or developing machine learning (ML) applications is increasing, and this trend is set to continue across a greater range of business areas within financial services. The largest expected increase in use, in absolute terms, is in the insurance sector, followed by banking.

Finance firms are using machine learning (ML) across their businesses with the technology's spread likely to continue as the obstacles it faces are not deemed insurmountable, according to a survey carried out by the Bank of England. The survey, which had more than 100 respondents, revealed that around two-thirds of financial services companies in the UK are using ML. The technology is used to replace manual tasks in the industry through its ability to recognise patterns in data and make decisions. "ML has wide-ranging applications in financial services and, when combined with increasing computational power, has the ability to analyse large data sets, detect patterns and solve problems at speed," said the Bank of England. "The use of ML has the potential to generate analytical insights, support new products and services, and reduce market frictions and inefficiencies. If this potential is achieved, consumers could benefit from more tailored, lower cost products and firms could become more responsive, leaner and effective."