What happened
In Primary Market Bulletin 67 (November 2026) the FCA set out anonymised findings from its review of a small sample of sponsors' use of AI in sponsor services. All sponsors described AI as supporting rather than replacing human judgement, with responsibility for the sponsor work remaining with the sponsor team and AI outputs subject to human review. Use ranged from administrative support and drafting to background research, document summarisation, first-draft generation and due-diligence inconsistency checks; a minority used specialist financial-services AI platforms or AI agents, but no sponsor reported AI replacing sponsor accountability.
Why it matters
The FCA is signalling to UK capital-markets firms that AI may be used in regulated sponsor work but does not shift responsibility from the sponsor, and that AI-generated outputs must remain subject to human review. It previews supervisory expectations for AI in sponsorship and similar regulated activities.
Action needed
Sponsors and firms using AI in sponsor/corporate finance work should document human review of AI outputs, maintain clear accountability for the sponsor team, and align AI use with the good-practice expectations implied by the FCA's findings.