Exclusive: Lloyds in tie-up with Google to build AI agents
Lloyds Banking Group has formed a tie-up with Google as the financial services giant sets its sight on building its own AI agents, CityAM can reveal.
The blue-chip lender is leveraging Google Cloud – the tech giant’s suite of computing services – and the bank’s existing Large Language Model to create a new internal platform for AI agents.
Templates on the platform – which is dubbed Envoy – will allow separate teams across the group to build their own tools, and then publish it to a central marketplace where other divisions can find and deploy them.
Customers will be able to interact with finished agents, which will be able to track and remember details throughout the inquiry.
Lloyds said the new project “supports the group’s ambition to scale agentic AI responsibly, helping colleagues work more efficiently while improving customer and colleague experiences.”
The bank added it would have “built-in checks for safety and risk” to ensure it meets “required standards before being used more widely”.
Lloyds goes all in on AI
The firm is among the most bullish AI embracers across the financial services industry as banks race to beef up their in-house tech capacity and compete with digital rivals. Starling and Revolut have both come out with AI financial assistant agents of their own in the last few months.
Charlie Nunn, the bank’s chief executive, went through an AI boot camp at Cambridge University along with other top bosses.
The group – along with rivals HSBC and Natwest – is also listed among the top 20 in Evident AI’s index, which serves as a global benchmark for AI integration in the banking sector.
Lloyds’ tech has come under scrutiny, however, with the firm suffering a major blunder on its mobile banking app last month.
A “technical glitch” led to thousands of users seeing rogue transactions on their app. The bank has now forked out around £200k to affected customers in compensation.