Partial Understanding

Adoption is mainstream, comprehension is not, and the accountability regime the strategy relies on has a hole in the middle of it. The position in September 2026 can be stated without much hedging. Firms have adopted. Supervisors have decided against new rules. Parliament has objected. Nobody has measured whether any of it works, and the one rigorous UK evaluation of an algorithmic intervention in this sector found a null result in half the market it examined. Partial Understanding · Financial services Three quarters of surveyed UK financial firms are using artificial intelligence, and almost half tell their supervisors they understand it only partially. The Financial Conduct Authority has decided that no new rules are needed, resting instead on the Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers and Certification Regime. Yet no senior management function and no prescribed responsibility for artificial intelligence has been created, so the accountability the strategy depends on has been asserted and not allocated. This paper argues that the allocation is the work. A firm that names the accountable individual, writes down what that person is accountable for, and builds the evidence that lets them discharge it, will find every subsequent rule cheap. A firm that waits for the rule will be building the evidence under deadline.