A summit held at the House of Lords has urged UK businesses and policymakers to accelerate adoption of agentic artificial intelligence, positioning the technology as a potential lever for productivity growth amid persistent economic weakness.
Chaired by Steven George-Hilley, founder of Centropy PR, the event brought together senior figures from the technology, financial services, legal, and cybersecurity sectors to examine how autonomous AI systems could reshape decision-making, customer engagement, and risk management. Discussion focused on the role of agentic AI in expanding access to sophisticated sales, customer management, and analytical tools for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The summit follows a sluggish second half of 2025 for the UK economy. Monthly GDP data showed minimal growth through the autumn, with output flat or marginal in several months and continued weakness in construction and manufacturing. Services activity remained uneven, reinforcing concerns that productivity gains remain difficult to secure despite easing inflationary pressures.
Against this backdrop, recent industry research suggests momentum is building around agentic AI, albeit cautiously. Surveys published earlier this month indicate that around 68% of UK companies are now beginning pilot projects involving agentic or autonomous AI systems, particularly in customer operations, analytics, and internal workflow automation. However, far fewer organisations report deployments at scale, reflecting ongoing concerns around governance, skills availability, and integration with legacy systems.
Speakers at the summit warned that this gap between experimentation and execution is especially pronounced among smaller businesses, many of which lack in-house data engineering and AI governance expertise. Several participants described a growing skills shortfall as artificial intelligence adoption accelerates across sectors.
Rupert Osborne, UK chief executive of trading platform Capital.com, said agentic AI could help improve decision quality without displacing human judgement.
“AI can play an important role in improving decision quality in investing by making complex market information easier to understand and by surfacing risk and educational material in a clearer, more structured way,” Osborne said. “Used responsibly, AI can organise data, explain market movements, and make uncertainty more visible so decisions are informed by context and risk, not just price.”
Cybersecurity was a recurring theme throughout the discussion. Graeme Stewart, head of public sector at Check Point Software, said expanding AI use across government and regulated sectors would require security and privacy considerations to be embedded from the outset.
“We’ve already seen how ruthless hackers can be when it comes to targeting vulnerable organisations,” Stewart said. “So cyber resilience must be built in to these investments, both in terms of strategy and software.”
Jan Tlaskal, chief data engineer at Galytix, said domain-specific agentic AI could offer a strategic advantage in complex regulatory environments.
“With the financial services sector facing an increasingly complex risk environment, the role of domain-specific AI to provide accurate data and high-trust decision-making cannot be underestimated,” Tlaskal said.
Speakers concluded that without broader, more confident adoption of agentic AI — particularly among SMEs — efforts to lift UK productivity are likely to remain constrained in a low-growth economic environment.
