UK banks are predicted to invest over £1.8 billion in generative AI (genAI) by 2030 to boost productivity, reduce costs, and improve customer experience, according to new research from Zopa and Juniper Research.

These deployments are projected to save 187 million labour hours – mainly 82% from back-office and compliance tasks.

The resulting cost savings, also estimated at £1.8bn, represent a full return on investment, with half of these savings expected to come from back-office functions.

The research found that finance could benefit the most from the integration of generative AI, from simple automation to financial modelling and improved security.

“GenAI marks a paradigm shift in applied computing. Its influence on productivity, software creation, and decision-making systems could rival the advent of the Internet or cloud computing,” said Peter Donlon, Zopa CTO.

“At Zopa, we’ve been operationalising machine learning for over a decade, well before LLMs became mainstream. That depth of experience has shaped our belief that GenAI isn’t a feature add-on, but a foundational capability.”

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Taking a note from this research, Zopa is launching a reskilling campaign, aiming to retrain 100,000 banking workers in AI over the next five years.

Nick Maynard, VP of fintech market research at Zopa said: “The UK banking sector stands at a tipping point, with GenAI being set to reshape how banking fundamentally works,”

“Digital banks and their experiences will be critical to leading the banking market through this revolution.”