Lloyds Banking Group has announced a four-year research partnership with the University of Glasgow to explore how agentic artificial intelligence can enhance software and data engineering at enterprise scale.
The collaboration will focus on integrating large-language-model-based coding agents into real-world engineering workflows to improve both delivery speed and quality. Lloyds’ engineering teams across Bristol, Manchester, and Hyderabad will work alongside AI systems on a rotating set of tasks, enabling the partners to measure performance and identify best practices for deployment.
As the program progresses, successful use cases will be scaled across Lloyds Banking Group’s wider data and engineering teams. The initiative is also designed to build a deeper understanding of how to implement agentic AI responsibly within large, regulated organizations.
The partnership will establish new academic roles, including a PhD, a Master’s of Research, and a postdoctoral research position at the University of Glasgow. These roles will work closely with Lloyds’ engineering teams, providing a bridge between academic research and industry application.
As the UK’s largest digital bank, Lloyds Banking Group is continuing to invest heavily in digital transformation, including AI-driven tools, workforce training, and new capabilities to support its 28 million customers. The research program is expected to contribute not only to internal productivity gains but also to broader industry standards, as findings are published through research papers and best-practice frameworks.
The collaboration will be led on the academic side by Dr Tim Storer and Dr Peggy Gregory, while Lloyds Banking Group’s contribution will be led by Dr Shane Montague, with executive sponsorship from Professor Andrew McDonald.
Together, the partners aim to generate rigorous, real-world evidence on the effectiveness of agentic AI in software engineering, helping shape governance, auditability, and adoption strategies for autonomous systems in financial services.
KEY QUOTES
“Agentic-driven software engineering is a fast-developing sector with the potential to enable human engineers to work more efficiently by automating some tasks and allowing them to focus their skills on higher-level work. However, there has been relatively little research in industry on how integrating agentic AI into software engineering practices can be done effectively in large-scale organisations. We’re delighted to be partnering with Lloyds Banking Group on this groundbreaking project. Together, we will enable the Group’s plans to increase their software development capacity, produce high-quality research for the benefit of all, and influence national policy and industry standards.”
Dr. Tim Storer, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
“Lloyds Banking Group’s mission to Help Britain Prosper means leading innovation that genuinely improves how engineering gets done, with a focus on delivering enhanced digital services for our customers. We’re excited to partner with the University of Glasgow to gather rigorous, real-world evidence from day-to-day engineering work, so we can understand what really works and how agentic AI can be applied effectively and responsibly at scale.”
Dr. Shane Montague, Head of Research Engineering, Lloyds Banking Group
