Lloyds and Nationwide invest in Scottish AI fintech Aveni

Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide have participated in an £11 million Series A funding round for Aveni, a Scottish fintech company specializing in AI solutions for the financial services sector. This investment, led by Puma Private Equity and supported by Par Equity, aims to advance Aveni’s development of FinLLM, a large language model tailored specifically for financial services.

Aveni focuses on creating AI tools to optimize workflows within the financial industry, particularly in areas like financial advisory services and compliance. The new funding will be directed towards enhancing FinLLM, which is being developed in collaboration with Lloyds and Nationwide. This model is designed to address the specific needs of the financial services industry, emphasizing accuracy, transparency, and trust, rather than general capabilities.

Joseph Twigg, CEO of Aveni, emphasized the importance of creating specialized AI models that are highly tuned to the financial services industry, ensuring they are trained and validated with industry-specific data. The goal is to set a new benchmark for ethical and responsible use of generative AI within the sector.

Robin Scher, head of fintech investments at Lloyds Banking Group, highlighted the potential of this development to streamline operations and enhance customer experiences in the financial services industry. He expressed confidence in Aveni’s vision and the collaboration’s potential to make Aveni a leader in the adoption of AI in finance, while ensuring responsible use and a focus on customer-centric solutions.

This investment underscores the growing importance of AI in financial services and the industry’s shift towards more specialized, accurate, and ethical AI applications.

Source: fintextra.com

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