Aveni Launches FinLLM: A Specialized AI Model for UK Financial Services

Scottish fintech launches sector-specific large language model

Aveni has released its first iteration of FinLLM - a domain-specific large language model (LLM) built for the UK financial services sector. The Edinburgh-based firm's Aveni Labs division has been working on FinLLM for the past six months. It is designed to integrate structured and unstructured data, adhering to ethical artificial intelligence principles, while being governed by rigorous oversight -- in order to meet the industry's stringent requirements for compliance, aligning with Financial Conduct Authority guidance and the EU AI Act. The product has been a strategic priority for Aveni and was the focus of investment made in the business last year by Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide. The collaborative engagement ensures that the model capabilities are grounded in real-world applications and industry needs. Extensive benchmarking shows that FinLLM consistently outperforms general-purpose LLMs on financial tasks, while maintaining performance on standard benchmark tasks. Its results across continual pre-training (CPT) and instruction fine-tuning (SFT) stages reflects the strength of Aveni's data strategy, training process and evaluation framework. Joseph Twigg, chief executive of Aveni, commented: "In an era where AI sovereignty is becoming increasingly important, FinLLM is a fantastic example of UK AI Innovation. "The output is a highly performant model, that over coming months will start to deliver automation for a range of use cases in UK financial services. "With data transparency, AI safety and ethics at its heart, FInLLM is also poised to play a key role in the adoption of AI agents in the UK market, presenting an attractive alternative to large US- based LLMs." Ranil Boteju, group chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds Banking Group, said: "Having seen the FinLLM roadmap and integration with the broader Aveni product suite, I've been blown away with the progress and ambition. "I am excited to see the transformative impact the Aveni FinLLM will have when deployed at scale across Lloyds Banking Group and the industry." Dr Lexi Birch, head of Aveni Labs, added: "We've brought together the expertise of our world-leading NLP researchers and seasoned financial industry professionals to shape a roadmap for delivering reliable generative AI to a highly regulated sector - where accuracy and trust are non-negotiable." With its core capabilities now established, FinLLM is set to move from research into real-world deployment. The next phase will focus on scaling its impact across the UK financial services sector by embedding it within Aveni's flagship products; Aveni Detect and Aveni Assist. This phase will include expanding the FinLLM model suite, integrating proprietary financial datasets and aligning its capabilities with sector-specific compliance and performance demands. Don't miss the latest headlines with our twice-daily newsletter - sign up here for free.

Aveni launches FinLLM with backing from Lloyds and Nationwide

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Developed over six months by the specialist team at Aveni Labs in tandem with input from its banking partners, FinLLM is designed to meet requirements for compliance, safety, and performance in alignment with FCA guidance and the EU AI Act. Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide joined an £11 million Series A funding round in the Scottish fintech in July last year, and have since been egaged with the firm in the development of FinLLM. Ranil Boteju, group chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds, says: "Aveni's FinLLM will be a game changer for UK financial services. Recognising its potential, Lloyds Banking Group invested in Aveni in 2024, and since then have worked closely with Aveni to co-create FinLLM and test it on our live AI use cases. Having seen the FinLLM roadmap and integration with the broader Aveni product suite, I've been blown away with the progress and ambition. I am excited to see the transformative impact the Aveni FinLLM will have when deployed at scale across Lloyds Banking Group and the industry." Aveni says that extensive benchmarking shows that FinLLM consistently outperforms general-purpose LLMs on financial tasks, while maintaining performance on standard benchmark tasks. Sri Kanisapakkam, chief data officer at Nationwide, comments: "Since investing in Aveni and working closely together on co-creating the FinLLM, we are delighted to see its first iteration being released. We're excited by the performance of FinLLM and the potential benefits it will bring both Nationwide and our customers." With its core capabilities now established, FinLLM is set to move from research into real-world deployment covering areas from risk and compliance to adviser processes and operational oversight as well as a broader shift toward agentic, domain-specialised AI. Joseph Twigg, CEO of Aveni says: "With data transparency, AI Safety and Ethics at its heart, FInLLM is also poised to play a key role in the adoption of AI Agents in the UK market, presenting an attractive alternative to large US- based LLMs."