Zopa launches AI-powered personal banking agent

Zopa is rolling out a conversational AI agent to current account customers in the UK. The bank describes the new feature as an always-on personal banker embedded directly in its mobile banking app.

The agent is designed to handle a range of everyday banking tasks through natural language. Customers can ask it to request payments, split bills from an image of a receipt or pay invoices by uploading a photo.

AI moves beyond customer support into everyday banking

The personal banking agent will also support customers with savings goals, budgeting and planning upcoming expenses. According to Zopa, the system can make suggestions on how users might save more or prepare for future payments.

The launch moves conversational AI closer to transactional banking. Instead of limiting AI to answering questions, Zopa is integrating it into tasks that involve payments, budgeting and day-to-day financial management.

The rollout is part of a broader AI strategy

The new personal agent is part of a wider deployment of AI across Zopa's business. The bank is one year into a five-year programme focused on building AI skills across the banking workforce.

The initiative is intended to reskill 100,000 banking workers in AI disciplines by 2030. It followed the rollout of 1,000 enterprise-grade ChatGPT licences and OpenAI-led training for staff covering prompt writing, engineering best practices and the development of custom GPTs for internal use.

AI is already being used internally

Zopa says employees are already using generative AI to improve productivity across the organisation. AI now resolves 65% of customer service queries, according to the bank.

This internal adoption provides the operational base for expanding AI into customer-facing banking services. The new agent extends the technology from support and employee productivity into direct interaction with customer accounts and financial tasks.

Zopa positions itself as an AI-native bank

Zopa says the shift toward AI-native banking requires more than adding a chatbot to an existing application. The bank argues that technology, data and architecture need to be designed around intelligent and personalised interactions.

"An AI-native bank is not simply an existing banking app with a chatbot added to it," says the bank. "It requires the underlying technology, data and architecture to be designed around intelligent, personalised interactions."