Lisa Quest is the UK CEO of Marsh, a CBI member, and this article represents her views. For the CBI's view on the issues mentioned, please check out our latest reports.
The UK has always done best when it has paired invention with delivery.
In the industrial age, economic strength rested on coal, steel, ports, and railways. Today, in an AI-driven economy, it increasingly rests on the infrastructure that powers intelligence itself: energy, connectivity, data centres, and the capital to build them.
That is the real test in the global AI race: Not who can produce the boldest vision, but who can build the foundations quickly and credibly enough to turn potential into growth.
The UK has real strengths. Our universities are world class, our scientific base is deep, and our technology sector is dynamic. But ambition alone, does not secure competitiveness. Productivity, regional growth, and long-term economic advantage will depend on whether we can finance, build, and manage the infrastructure AI requires.
That is why the UK’s hidden advantage is not just technical talent. It is our ability to make opportunity investable.
AI is often portrayed as a race for processing power, talent, and innovation. It is also a race for capital, confidence, and delivery. Here, the UK brings something distinctive to the table; a world-leading financial and professional services ecosystem, with deep expertise in risk, insurance, advisory, and investment.
The prize is significant. In 2024, the UK’s digital economy and supporting infrastructure accounted for more than 13% of the economy, contributing £286 billion in gross value added. Globally, data centre processing capacity is expected to rise from 75GW today to 140GW by 2030, driven in large part by a rise in reliance on AI. Oliver Wyman research suggests scaling these digital capabilities could add as much as $20 trillion to global GDP by 2030 and save 300 billion work hours a year.
But growth on that scale will not come from strategy documents alone.
AI adoption requires vastly more computing power. That means there will be increased pressure for more data centre capacity, more high-voltage grid connections, and stronger digital connectivity. Yet progress is being held back by planning delays, grid bottlenecks, and pressure on global supply chains. The UK risks talking indefinitely about leadership in AI while falling behind in building the physical infrastructure needed to support it.
At heart, this is a question of confidence.
Delays to power connections and operations on large-scale projects can create significant financial exposure, potentially reaching into the billions of dollars, including risks that may be difficult or impossible to insure.
When projects become harder to assess, harder to finance, and harder to protect, investors become more cautious. Capital then looks for certainty elsewhere.
Competition for digital infrastructure investment is global and intense. If the UK cannot make these projects credible, resilient, and attractive to long-term investors, we will not simply miss out on individual developments, we will weaken productivity and lose ground in a market where others are moving quickly.
This is why the theme of this year’s CBI Annual Conference, The Power of Business, feels exactly right.
Business will not just benefit from the AI transition. Business will determine whether it happens at pace and at scale.
The firms that build, insure, finance, advise, and operate this infrastructure are core machinery of the AI economy. That matters for the UK, because our strengths are not confined to research and innovation. We also have the institutional depth to absorb risk, structure capital, and create the confidence that allows new sectors to grow.
That advantage becomes more valuable as trust and assurance move to the centre of the AI debate. Oliver Wyman and CBI research has highlighted the UK’s potential to lead in AI assurance and standards, while government research suggests the UK’s AI assurance market could grow from around £1 billion today to £18.8 billion by 2035.
More than a substantial opportunity, this points to a wider competitive strength: in an AI economy, the ability to create trust, resilience, and accountability will matter just as much as the ability to innovate.
The task now is to turn that strength into investment.
Better data, analytics, and risk modelling can give developers, lenders, and investors a clearer view of construction, operational, and energy-related risks. Insurance, reinsurance and specialist capital can then help distribute those risks, strengthening resilience, and making complex projects more financeable.
That in turn can unlock long-term private capital. Pension funds and institutional investors are well suited to infrastructure, but they are understandably cautious when delivery, performance, or revenue assumptions are unclear. Improving the way these risks are assessed and managed, will give investors greater confidence to commit capital at scale.
The UK’s financial strength should not be treated as separate from its AI strategy. It is one of the ways that strategy becomes real.
Government has a critical role too. Unlocking private capital at scale will require serious partnership between government, industry, and financial institutions, focused on building faster, creating certainty, and mobilising capital. Building faster means streamlining planning for digital infrastructure and prioritising grid connections for strategically important projects such as data centres.
Creating certainty means regulation that is clear, proportionate, and aligned with international markets. Investors can price risk. What they struggle to price is ambiguity.
The countries that lead in AI will be those that build the strongest ecosystems around it, where power, computing, connectivity, capital, and trust come together.
If the UK sees its financial and professional services sector as part of its AI infrastructure strategy, rather than adjacent to it, we have a genuine competitive advantage. We can use one of the UK’s longest-standing strengths to help define our success in the next economy.
That is the power of business the UK should now put to work.
Marsh are a proud Strategic Partner of this year's CBI Annual Conference. Lisa Quest will join us at this year's Conference on 23 November as part of Resilience is Power, a fireside conversation with CBI Chief Executive Rain Newton-Smith.
Secure your tickets to Annual Conference to hear from Lisa among many other leading voices across business and politics.
