By Steve Conley, Founder – Academy of Life Planning
December 2025 | 5 Minutes Read
🧩 The New Frontier — or the Same Old Game?
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has just launched what it calls a “safe space for AI” — a controlled testing environment where the UK’s largest financial firms can experiment with artificial intelligence “without fear of tripping regulatory wires.”
NatWest, Monzo, Santander, Scottish Widows, and others will participate. The regulator says it will offer “tailored oversight” and “technical support” from its assurance partner, Advai, to ensure AI is “deployed safely and responsibly.”
But those of us who’ve watched this industry for decades recognise the pattern. This isn’t the dawn of ethical innovation — it’s the digital replay of an old story. The captured regulator is once again inviting the captors to design the rules of their own game.
The FCA calls it “live testing.” We call it captured AI.
Let’s translate that.
It’s not a safe space for consumers. It’s a safe space for industry.Among the chosen firms — NatWest, Monzo, Santander, Scottish Widows — are institutions with long records of consumer harm, unresolved complaints, and opaque fee structures. Now they’re being invited to co-create the rulebook for the very technology that will soon decide who gets a mortgage, a loan, or justice after harm.
We’re told the aim is to “deploy AI safely and responsibly.” But if history teaches us anything, these sandboxes are where the captured test their limits, not their ethics. When the referee joins the players’ team, the game is lost.
The FCA’s assurance partner, Advai, speaks of “trust and resilience,” but where is the independent voice of consumers, citizen investigators, or holistic planners in this process?
Where are the human capital metrics — purpose, well-being, dignity — in their test models?
Where is the fiduciary standard?Let’s be clear: AI isn’t the problem — captured AI is.
Open, citizen-centred AI can expose systemic misconduct and democratise financial planning. Captured AI can conceal misconduct faster, at scale, with a friendly chatbot face.As the FCA promises it won’t “come after you every time something goes wrong,” consumers are left wondering — when did accountability become optional?
⚖️ When Regulation Becomes Collaboration
In theory, testing AI tools before they go live makes sense. In practice, the FCA’s new “sandbox” raises a deeper concern:
Who is this space really safe for?
Because when the regulator tells industry players, “We won’t come after you every time something goes wrong,” it sends a chilling signal to the public — that accountability has become conditional.
This is the same logic that gave us the advice gap, mis-sold pensions, and product-led “wealth management.” Now it risks being baked into the algorithms that will soon automate advice, complaints handling, and customer service.
Imagine AI chatbots deciding who gets compensation, who gets repossessed, and who gets ignored — all trained inside a “safe” environment built by those with the most to gain from concealment.
This isn’t innovation. It’s industrial capture at machine speed.
🧠Captured vs. Sovereign AI
At the Academy of Life Planning, we distinguish between two paradigms:
| Captured AI | Sovereign AI |
|---|---|
| Centralised, proprietary, opaque | Open, transparent, explainable |
| Optimised for profit extraction | Designed for empowerment and autonomy |
| Treats users as data points | Treats users as decision-makers |
| Extends dependency | Builds self-agency |
| Hides misconduct faster | Exposes misconduct faster |
Captured AI is a new mask for an old motive: control.
Sovereign AI, by contrast, amplifies human intelligence, trust, and freedom. It puts the citizen — not the corporation — at the centre of the financial system.
The FCA’s “safe testing” scheme reveals which side of that divide the regulator has chosen.
🕳️ The Hollow Promise of “Safety”
Let’s look closer at what’s being tested.
The FCA cites “AI-driven financial advice, complaints sorting and customer-engagement systems.”
In plain language: the very functions that determine whether a consumer is heard, helped, or harmed.
If these systems are tested without independent oversight — without the participation of citizen investigators, consumer advocates, or fiduciary planners — the results will be predictable:
- AI that ticks compliance boxes while sidestepping moral duty.
- AI that maximises margins, not outcomes.
- AI that rationalises harm as “efficiency.”
Safety for the system does not equal safety for the citizen.
🔍 The Wider Pattern: Regulatory Capture in Digital Form
The FCA’s “live testing” follows a decade-long trend of regulatory retreat — from product disclosure to consumer duty, from mis-selling oversight to complaint adjudication. Each reform promised empowerment, yet somehow concentrated more power in fewer hands.
Now that same logic is entering the neural architecture of the financial system.
If we allow industry to train the algorithms, regulators to shield them, and consumers to trust them blindly, then we will have automated exploitation itself.
Captured AI doesn’t just replicate bias — it institutionalises it.
🧠The Academy’s Stand: Ethical AI for Empowerment
At the Academy of Life Planning, we have been preparing for this moment for over a decade.
Our commitment to Ethical AI is rooted in three principles:
- Transparency: Every algorithm should be explainable — not just to regulators, but to citizens.
- Sovereignty: Individuals must retain control over their data, choices, and financial narratives.
- Integration: AI must serve the whole human — integrating emotional, social, and spiritual capital alongside financial data.
That’s why our own systems — from the HapNav® cashflow app to the GAME Plan™ framework — are built on open architecture, client-led design, and the principle of human before product.
We don’t want AI that decides for you.
We want AI that helps you decide for yourself.
🌍 A Call for an Open AI Commons
If the FCA can create a sandbox for corporations, then citizens can build one for humanity.
We propose the creation of an Open AI Commons — a collaborative testing environment led by planners, consumers, and ethicists. A space where algorithms are audited for fairness, transparency, and alignment with human well-being.
Instead of testing whether AI can sell products safely, let’s test whether it can empower people ethically.
Imagine a “Citizen Sandbox” where planners, educators, and clients co-design tools that:
- Calculate enough, not maximum profit.
- Forecast well-being, not wallet share.
- Measure trustworthiness, not distribution yield.
That’s the future we stand for.
đź’¬ Final Reflection: Who Tests the Testers?
The FCA’s initiative reminds us of a simple truth: you cannot regulate your way to ethics when the regulators themselves are embedded in the system they oversee.
Ethical AI requires moral imagination — not just technical assurance.
So, to every planner, citizen investigator, and conscious technologist reading this:
Let’s not outsource integrity to sandboxes. Let’s build systems worthy of trust from the start.
The question isn’t whether AI will transform finance.
It’s whether we will shape that transformation — or be shaped by it.
Join the Movement
If you believe in open, transparent, citizen-led AI that serves humanity first, connect with us through the Academy of Life Planning, the M-POWER Movement, or Get SAFE.
Together, we can ensure that the future of intelligence — artificial or otherwise — belongs to everyone.
About Get SAFE
Get SAFE (Support After Financial Exploitation) is a citizen-led initiative that empowers victims of financial harm to investigate, document, and pursue redress.
Through AI-enabled training, structured playbooks, and collaborative fellowship, Get SAFE transforms victims into advocates — ensuring that truth and justice are not luxuries, but rights.
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steve.conley@aolp.co.uk | +44 (0)7850 102070
Academy of Life Planning 