Lloyds Bank, one of the largest banks in the UK and Europe, is sending top management to Cambridge University and enrolling employees on courses with Google

Lloyds Banking Group Plc has partnered with the University of Cambridge to train 300 senior staff in artificial intelligence, aligning with the bank’s broader technology transformation efforts. According to Bloomberg News, the first cohort of leaders from the British bank began an 80-hour course this month aimed at fostering an “AI-first” mindset. Lloyds is one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe with over 66,000 employees across the globe (as per its annual report).
Rohit Dhawan, Lloyds’ head of AI and advanced analytics, told Bloomberg, “Participants of the programme will receive training in an 80-hour programme, known as Leading with AI,” which is delivered by Cambridge Spark alongside Cambridge University experts. Dhawan, who joined Lloyds in August 2024, likened the bank’s AI development to “flying an airplane while building it.” He noted that the bank recently completed a three-year migration of its data and AI assets to the cloud, positioning it for widespread AI integration.
The Leading with AI program, developed by Lloyds experts in collaboration with Cambridge Spark and Cambridge University, covers AI regulation, ethics, generative AI mechanics, its challenges, and emerging concepts like agentic AI, which operates independently of human input. Raoul-Gabriel Urma, founder of Cambridge Spark, outlined these components to the publication.
Additionally, Lloyds has enrolled around 3,000 employees in Google-led courses tailored for AI specialists, data scientists, business intelligence experts, and data engineers. The bank is also an investor in Aveni.AI, a startup creating a large language model tailored for financial services.

Globally, banks are competing to leverage AI tools, seen as a key opportunity to streamline processes, cut costs, and potentially automate thousands of jobs. Lloyds has been revamping its technology infrastructure for years, including evaluating thousands of UK tech staff, some of whom were let go or reassigned.
The bank is already seeing results from its AI initiatives. Dhawan shared with Bloomberg that approximately 100 employees are working on an AI-enabled agent set for beta testing in the coming months. He added that Lloyds maintains ongoing discussions with the Financial Conduct Authority to ensure safe AI deployment, particularly for future applications like financial advice.
Lloyds is expanding its workforce, actively recruiting in the UK and India, where it established a tech hub in Hyderabad in 2023. With over 1,000 open positions, roughly 70% are in technology and data roles, per Bloomberg.