I sat down with Cainan Wright, Senior Product Owner, and John Young, AI Lead – Chatbots and Generative AI, at Lloyds Banking Group, to explore their remarkable nine-year journey in building one of the UK’s most successful virtual assistants in banking.
From handling 3 million conversations in 2021 to over 15 million in 2025, they share the hard-earned lessons of transforming a rather “unloved” virtual assistant into a mission-critical service for almost 27 million customers.
We cover how the team stabilised their service by focusing on the basics, investing in design expertise, and securing organisational buy-in through demonstrating clear value.
Cainan and John also share valuable insights into their pragmatic approach to generative AI, explaining how they combine deterministic processes with generative language capabilities to deliver the best customer experience, while maintaining brand consistency and ensuring regulatory compliance.
The team’s journey offers important lessons about perseverance and the importance of striking a balance between innovation and responsibility when deploying AI in a highly regulated industry.
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