Zopa-Juniper 2030 GenAI Report: UK Banks Set to Invest £1.8 Billion by 2030 in GenAI With Mass Re-skilling Opportunity for 270,000 Workers

Digital bank Zopa and Juniper Research have today released a new study detailing the seismic impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) on the UK banking sector.

UK banks are poised to invest over £1.8 billion ($2.5bn) in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) by 2030 to increase staff productivity, cut costs, and enhance user experience — underscoring the growing importance of Large Language Models (LLMs) in meeting evolving customer expectations.

This significant investment is already translating into projected outcomes across the sector. As a result of productivity gains, in the next five years some 187 million hours of labour are expected to be saved by GenAI deployments, with the majority of efficiencies (~82%) coming from back office and administrative tasks in operations and compliance.

These labour savings are expected to drive substantial financial efficiencies with the majority of cost savings—around 50%—anticipated from back-office functions. Notably, projected savings from GenAI are expected to match the total investment, with £1.8 billion saved by 2030.

This would equate to a 100% ROI in this first GenAI cycle, suggesting that even in its early stages GenAI can deliver outsized returns, especially for high street incumbents with large networks of retail branches and legacy IT systems, both of which contribute to high levels of manual process.

This investment in GenAI also creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reskill and upskill thousands of industry workers in AI disciplines.

Peter Donlon, Chief Technology Officer at Zopa Bank said: “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. 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. For Zopa technologists, it’s a rare chance to build entirely new intelligence layers, at a level that will redefine the industry.”

Clare Gambardella, Chief Customer Officer, added: “Generative AI marks a once-in-a-generation shift—redefining the future of work and the skills that power it. At Zopa, innovation has always been in our DNA, and with GenAI, we’re focused on turning that innovation into meaningful, trusted value for customers. We’ve always believed in using technology to remove complexity and put people in control of their finances. With GenAI, we have the opportunity to continue on that journey – making the customer experience more intuitive, personalised, and intelligent than ever before for millions across the UK.”

Nick Maynard, VP of Fintech Market Research, said: “The UK banking sector stands at a tipping point, with GenAI being set to reshape how banking fundamentally works. GenAI creates risk and opportunity – the risk of a major shift in the skills workers will need to thrive, but the opportunity to create a better banking experience. Digital-only brands like Zopa already have deep experience with AI in their operations and will be less impacted by this shift. As such, digital banks and their experiences will be critical to leading the banking market through this revolution.”

As promising as this shift is, it also raises concerns around jobs displacement. Around 27,000 roles—equivalent to 10% of all UK banking jobs—are at risk of significant change by 2030, primarily impacting employees at high street banks with large retail footprints.

In response to this challenge, Zopa has today launched JOBS 2030 (www.jobs2030.ai), a five-year campaign to reskill 100,000 banking workers in AI disciplines by 2030.

The campaign will start by offering modules in AI disciplines for fintech workers, specifically engineers, analysts, and operations leads. They will be provided with accessible and industry-aligned training tailored specifically to the UK banking sector. A dedicated GenAI Engineering Programme will later support deeper technical upskilling, alongside the creation of the Zopa Coding Academy. The first training modules will be released internally to Zopa employees for testing and feedback before being rolled out more broadly.

Following the rollout of 1,000 enterprise-grade licenses, today every Zopa employee has access to GenAI tools like ChatGPT—paired with advanced OpenAI-led training on prompt writing, engineering best practices, and building custom GPTs tailored for internal use.

These initiatives build on Zopa’s rapidly expanding GenAI capability—from using custom GPTs to handle customer queries and detect vulnerabilities, to deploying autonomous coding agents that streamline development processes. A forthcoming AI Voice Assistant will soon take this even further, making customer interactions more intuitive, efficient, and human.

The full report, “Generative AI: Transforming the UK Banking Sector”, is available for download here.

To learn more or get involved, visit www.jobs2030.ai