What Must Signatories Commit to Under the Government's Skills Compact?

AI adoption across financial services is accelerating faster than most firms' formal training programmes.

Trading desks, operations teams and customer service functions are already using AI-assisted tools, often before anyone has assessed whether staff understand their risks and limitations.

The AI Skills Compact gives organisations a public route to commit to closing that gap. But many leaders considering signing are unclear what it actually requires beyond a general statement of intent.

Before committing publicly, firms need to understand the concrete obligations involved — what must be measured, who must own it, and what evidence may be expected over time.

Why the AI Skills Compact Exists

Financial services firms are under growing pressure to demonstrate that their workforce can use AI safely and effectively.

Regulators, clients and boards increasingly expect evidence that AI-assisted decisions — from trade reconciliation to lending approvals — are made by people who understand how the underlying tools work, where they can fail and when human judgement must intervene.

At the same time, AI tools are being adopted faster than most firms' training and governance structures can keep pace with. This creates a visible skills gap: staff using AI tools without a consistent baseline of understanding across the organisation.

The AI Skills Compact was created to give organisations a structured, public way to commit to closing that gap, rather than leaving workforce AI literacy to informal, ad-hoc effort.

How Organisations Traditionally Approached Workforce Upskilling

Most financial services firms have historically relied on informal approaches to AI-related upskilling.

Common patterns include:

• Optional e-learning modules with low completion tracking.
• Team-level guidance shared informally by managers.
• Training introduced only after an incident or audit finding.
• No consistent baseline measurement of who understands what.

These approaches can work for small teams or narrow use cases, but they rarely produce evidence that an organisation's workforce, as a whole, understands AI risks and capabilities.

When a regulator, client or board asks for evidence of workforce AI literacy, informal approaches typically cannot demonstrate consistent coverage, ownership or progress. This is the gap the Compact is designed to address.

What Signing the Compact Actually Commits You To

Signing the AI Skills Compact is not simply a public statement of support. In practice, it involves committing to a set of operational obligations.

Typical commitments include:

• Named executive ownership. A senior individual is accountable for the organisation's AI literacy programme, rather than leaving it distributed across teams with no single owner.
• Baseline assessment. The organisation measures current AI literacy levels across relevant staff groups before setting targets, so progress can be demonstrated rather than assumed.
• Structured learning provision. Staff are given planned, resourced opportunities to build AI literacy — not just access to optional materials.
• Ongoing measurement and reporting. Progress against commitments is tracked over time and may need to be evidenced periodically, whether internally to the board or externally to stakeholders.

Taken together, these commitments shift AI literacy from a background activity into a governed programme with accountability, measurement and expected outcomes.

Operational Considerations Before Signing

Before signing, organisations should honestly assess whether they can meet these commitments in practice.

Key questions include:

• Who will act as the accountable executive sponsor, and do they have the authority and time to own this?
• Can the organisation run a credible baseline assessment across the relevant workforce segments?
• Is there budget and capacity to provide structured learning, not just access to materials?
• Which internal functions — HR, L&D, risk, compliance — need to be involved, and has that been agreed?
• What would evidence of progress look like, and who is responsible for producing it?

Signing before these questions are answered risks committing publicly to obligations the organisation is not yet resourced to meet. A phased, honest approach to commitment-setting is preferable to overpromising.

Example

A mid-sized London-based bond trading firm is considering signing the AI Skills Compact after its FX and settlement teams began using AI-assisted reconciliation tools without formal training.

Leadership wants to understand what obligations they would be taking on before committing publicly.

The firm appoints the Chief Operating Officer as executive sponsor, runs a baseline AI literacy assessment across trading and operations staff, and builds a phased training plan before signing.

This allows the firm to sign the Compact with confidence that its commitments are achievable and can be evidenced, rather than signing on the basis of good intentions alone.

FAQs

• Is signing the AI Skills Compact legally binding?

  Signing is a public commitment rather than a statutory obligation. However, financial services firms should treat it seriously, since failing to follow through on public commitments carries reputational risk and may attract scrutiny from regulators, clients and boards who expect firms to deliver on what they have publicly stated.

• Who within our organisation needs to be involved in meeting these commitments?

  Meeting Compact commitments typically requires cross-functional ownership, including an executive sponsor, HR and L&D teams to design and deliver training, and risk and compliance teams to ensure the programme addresses relevant regulatory expectations. Ownership by a single department alone tends to struggle to sustain progress across the whole workforce.

• What happens if we sign but cannot fully meet the commitments?

  Under-delivering on public commitments carries reputational and governance risk, particularly in a sector under regulatory scrutiny. It is generally better to set realistic, phased commitments that can genuinely be resourced and evidenced, rather than signing based on aspiration and struggling to demonstrate progress later.