Finance / Banking
Lloyds Banking Group: Internal knowledge search for customer service colleagues
- Company
- Lloyds Banking Group
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
According to Lloyds Banking Group press releases, the group has 28 million customers, and colleagues in its telephone and online banking teams help around 2 million customers every month. Because each customer needs information specific to their query, customer service colleagues had to find and understand the relevant content among the 13,000 internal articles that make up the group's internal knowledge hub before answering, which took considerable time. The group saw that AI could reduce the time colleagues spent searching and customers spent waiting, and significantly change the customer service experience.
Technology and data
In a July 2025 press release, Lloyds Banking Group introduced Athena, the group's first large-scale generative AI product. Athena is an AI knowledge hub for customer service colleagues: when a colleague searches, it scans the 13,000 internal articles used to handle customer queries and finds the needed information in one place. According to the press release, hundreds of customer support colleagues took part in testing and learning, checked the accuracy of answers and provided constant feedback, which also helped improve the quality of the group's knowledge base. A January 2026 press release described Athena as an AI-powered internal search and knowledge assistant that helps colleagues quickly find information to answer customer queries.
Results
According to the July 2025 press release, a search took an average of 59 seconds before Athena and about 20 seconds with it, a 66% reduction in search time. The group expected that the telephone banking teams alone would save 4,000 hours of time spent searching and of customers waiting. The same release said that since the start of 2025, 21,000 group colleagues had used Athena to search 2.1 million times, and that the group aimed to extend it to many more customer support colleagues by the end of the year, reaching an estimated 40 million searches. The January 2026 press release stated that Athena is used by 20,000 colleagues and has reduced search times by 66% on average.
Limits and open questions
The press releases do not disclose the AI model or search method Athena uses, or the accuracy of its answers. The 4,000 hours is a saving the group expected, and the number of users is given as 21,000 and 20,000 depending on when each press release was written.
Sources
- Group accelerates digital transformation with AI-powered Athenalloydsbankinggroup.com, Accessed
- Lloyds Banking Group expects over £100 million in value from next-generation AI in 2026lloydsbankinggroup.com, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.