Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide are upping investment in artificial intelligence (AI), seeking to bridge gaps between the technology and financial services sectors.
The banks, two of the biggest banking household names in the UK, have taken part in a Series A funding round in Aveni.ai, an Edinburgh-based AI fintech company.
Puma Private Equity led the funding round, which totalled £11m. The scale of the funds raised and the companies involved demonstrates how aware the financial services sector has become of AI’s opportunities.
Aveni plans to use the £11m to develop its FinLLM, a financial services specific large language model. The Generative AI (Gen AI) platform is being developed in cooperation with Lloyds and Nationwide.
Robin Scher, Head of Fintech Investments, Lloyds Banking Group, said: “Aveni’s cutting-edge AI solutions offer a huge opportunity for the financial services industry, streamlining operations and elevating the customer experience.
“We are keen to support Aveni’s growth as we invest in their vision to develop the FinLLM alongside partners. Our collaboration aims to establish Aveni as a frontrunner of the industry’s adoption of AI, whilst maintaining a focus on responsible usage and customer-centricity.”
Various financial institutions are increasing funding in AI, seeking to both make use of the technology for financial services whilst also capitalising on AI’s growth as an investment opportunity.
Post-funding, Aveni aims to further consolidate its position and target leadership in AI development for financial services. The company’s FInLLM development team will be based at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
Edinburgh is one of the UK’s most up-and-coming fintech centres. According to a report from Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking, investment in the city rose 409% year-over-year in Q1 2024, the highest rate of all UK cities.
Joseph Twigg, Aveni CEO, added: “The financial Services industry does not need AI models that can quote Shakespeare, it needs AI models that deliver transparency, trust and above all correctness.
“The way to achieve this is to develop small, highly tuned language models, trained on financial services data, reviewed by financial services experts for specific financial services use cases.
“Generative AI represents the most significant technological evolution of our generation and we’re in the nascent stages of adoption. This presents a significant opportunity for Aveni and our partners.
“The objective with FinLLM is to set a new standard for the controlled, responsible and ethical adoption of Generative AI, outperforming all other generic models across our selected financial service use cases.”
