Lloyds and Nationwide-backed fintech Aveni has released the first version of its domain-specific large language model for financial services, FinLLM.
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."