It was the second day of a really busy DSEI 2025 when Richard Holroyd, Chief Government of Public Companies at Capita, eased right into a chair reverse me. After a quick change about my Glasgow accent, the dialog turned rapidly to Capita’s place in defence.
Capita is among the UK’s largest outsourcing and providers suppliers, using tens of hundreds of workers and holding contracts throughout defence, authorities, transport and monetary providers.
Its popularity has been formed by high-profile public sector offers, together with Military recruiting and Royal Navy coaching, in addition to criticism over supply and missed targets. Extra lately, it has been build up a popularity as a technology-enabled providers enterprise, utilizing information and AI to reshape how giant contracts are delivered.
I requested Holroyd immediately how he desires Capita to be seen in that mild.
“Quite a lot of our buyer base will consider outdated Capita, which was outsourcers. We’ve shifted ourselves radically. We’re not a tech firm, however we’re a tech succesful firm.” Partnerships, he harassed, are central to that shift. “We’ve partnered with the hyperscalers, so with ServiceNow, with Salesforce, with Amazon Internet Companies, and we’ve got a improbable popularity for enterprise integration with SMEs and specialist firms.”
Navy coaching at scale, constructed across the learner
Challenge Selborne has been certainly one of Capita’s most high-profile defence contracts. Coaching was beforehand fragmented throughout dozens of preparations, and the corporate has confronted no scarcity of questions on whether or not consolidation would ship actual positive aspects. Holroyd was fast to level to outcomes Capita claims.
The agency says it has merged 27 contracts right into a single framework and now helps 80 p.c of shore-based coaching for sailors and marines throughout 14 websites. Based on its personal figures, Ofsted has rated institutions nearly as good or excellent, greater than 1,000 educators have been upskilled to ship over 650 programs, and apprentice retention sits at 92 p.c in contrast with a nationwide common of 59 p.c. Capita additionally highlights the Bridge Coach programme, which it says has doubled navigation coaching capability.
Holroyd steered away from numbers and charts to explain what he sees on the bottom. “In case you had been to go to the Clyde, Faslane is simply over the hill,” he stated. “You’d see the mixing of Kongsberg digital actuality simulators that now enable the Submarine Coaching Centre to coach bridge crews to navigate above the floor. We even have an entire bodily conning tower, panoramic encompass digital actuality stuff that enables main leading edge coaching functionality.”
The larger declare lies in how classes are delivered. “After I was a soldier, if the lesson took 45 minutes, you sat there for 45 minutes. Even when you acquired it and will move the take a look at after 5 minutes, you sat there for 45 minutes,” he stated. “We’ve used AI to construct a schedule optimisation device. We establish the easiest way to place the constructing blocks of the programs collectively. Take the coaching wants evaluation, apply expertise to it, and perceive the way you shift individuals by means of the teachings quicker with out compromising on high quality.”
Pressed for a concrete instance, Holroyd cited the submarine qualification course. “There’s a explicit course round qualification to go on a submarine, referred to as SNQ, Submarine Qualification, brackets Moist. We had been capable of take 20 p.c out of the size of time of that course,” he stated. “The Navy has this idea of jetty bulge, the place you get individuals by means of fundamental coaching after which everyone is sitting on the jetty ready to do the best programs whereas the fleet is beneath resourced. This reduces that.”
He added that the brand new mannequin permits sailors to progress between postings fairly than ready for classroom slots. “One of many issues the Navy had was you needed to wait until you had been on shore to do stuff,” he stated. “Now you are able to do stuff when you are at sea or when you are at house. When sailors come house, they are often with their households and nonetheless progress.” The cultural shift is as necessary because the expertise. “Younger individuals had been popping out of faculty and school and going again to Sixties methods of studying with chalk and speak,” he stated. “We have now modernised and introduced that as much as requirements, so persons are studying in the identical method they did at school, and really seeing it progress even additional.”
For Holroyd, the operational abstract is easy. “Our mission is to get extra sailors to the entrance line quicker,” he stated. The revealed statistics again that up to some extent, although his emphasis was on how AI and information are used to alter the order and tempo of coaching blocks fairly than on any single technological repair.
Military recruiting, from paper to digital and again to individuals
Few contracts have introduced Capita extra criticism than Military recruiting. Delays of greater than 200 days between utility and enlistment had been as soon as the norm, and missed targets drew parliamentary consideration. Holroyd acknowledged the size of the problem however argued that the method is now transferring quicker.
When Capita took over, the typical journey from utility to fundamental coaching was about 240 days. Holroyd stated that determine has since fallen to round 150. One early step was decreasing the mountain of paper medical information that slowed all the things down. At one level the corporate was dealing with 12 metric tons of bodily paperwork a 12 months. Massive language fashions now scan these information, flagging what clinicians want to take a look at and even studying medical doctors’ handwriting. Holroyd harassed that the ultimate name all the time rests with a human.
Postal delays had been one other choke level. Information may sit in GP inboxes for months, so Capita pressed the NHS to ship digital healthcare information as an alternative. Holroyd stated information that after took as much as three months to reach now seem in lower than per week, typically inside 24 hours. The corporate claims this alteration has boosted throughput by 30 p.c and reduce common wait instances from 30 days to eight.
The broader funnel, he added, is now busier. Capita reported the very best utility influx in seven years at 132,000, with the strongest energetic candidate pipeline in three years at greater than 10,000 in July. It additionally factors to officer loading persistently at 95 to one hundred pc in recent times, and junior entry averaging above 97 p.c over the previous seven years.
Holroyd was eager to emphasize that effectivity financial savings usually are not getting used to chop workers. As a substitute, recruiters now have extra time to maintain candidates engaged, one thing Capita believes is significant given the excessive dropout price early in coaching. One measure is an app that gives a structured health regime, designed to cease recruits injuring themselves or quitting after a couple of weeks. He additionally linked the reforms to generational expectations. In his view, right now’s candidates, who reside on their telephones, see paper varieties and lengthy waits as an anachronism. “There usually are not any analogue youngsters anymore. They’re all digital,” he remarked.
Coverage element usually determines how modernisation works in apply. Holroyd provided the instance of tattoos, which may nonetheless disqualify candidates if they’re above the neck. Till lately an applicant with beauty eyebrow tattoos may very well be robotically rejected just by ticking the fallacious field on a kind. That course of, he stated, is being redesigned. “We’re implementing a recognition device. You add {a photograph} of the tattoo. It can perceive the place it’s, what it seems to be like, and create a report that pushes you to take a look at those which are offensive or marginal. The human nonetheless stays within the loop.”
Past defence, the identical sample in public providers
I requested how far Capita’s AI-driven strategy prolonged past defence. Holroyd pointed to Transport for London, the place residents making use of for tunnel reductions as soon as confronted a 400-person name centre. “The unique answer concerned a 400 individual name centre with the intention to course of documentation,” he stated. “We put collectively an AI answer that was capable of confirm the doc. It may discover the deal with, learn it, cross reference it, confirm it towards different publicly accessible databases, verify that 63 individuals with completely different names haven’t used that deal with already, after which course of the low cost.”
The corporate says the system now carries out 29 authenticity checks, from x-ray evaluation to pixel-level error detection, and is healthier at recognizing fraud than the human eye. Based on Capita, transaction prices have fallen from about £2 per resident to 9 pence, wait instances from 4 days to 11 seconds, and workers necessities by round 75 p.c. It estimates that the change saves TfL roughly £2.6 million a 12 months.
Turning to welfare, Holroyd highlighted Capita’s position in Private Independence Fee assessments. “We run about 50 p.c of PIP,” he stated. “AI primarily based transcription providers can hearken to the whole dialog after which write that up in evidential high quality. It saves an enormous period of time and we will progress considerably extra assessments per day. The machine doesn’t make the choice. The choice stays with the human.” He stated the identical sample was being utilized in scholar incapacity assessments for the Pupil Loans Firm.
Native authorities are one other take a look at case. Holroyd described how a single system may deal with a number of providers in a single step. “When a citizen calls in and says I’m transferring, cancel my parking allow, the system will establish that you’re transferring,” he defined. “It can floor that you’re additionally a member of the native authority health club, you have got a library card, you might be registered at this service, and ship you hyperlinks by textual content to make all of the modifications.” At Lambeth Council, Capita says this mannequin recovered £3 million in historic council tax debt final 12 months and elevated fee commitments by £1.2 million, usually with out resorting to debt collectors.
Holroyd additionally pointed to Capita’s pensions enterprise for instance of automation inside the corporate itself. By monitoring keystrokes, he stated, the agency recognized the place workers had been spending time on repetitive cut-and-paste duties. “Now you can construct an agent to do this. It goes to that display, that database, places it into the mannequin, produces the letter. Now the agent checks that it’s all in the best place and that the numbers are proper.” His view of AI remained pragmatic: “AI is sensible at doing any activity that might take about quarter-hour. It creates extra time for helpful issues.”
The place AI sits, and why the boundary issues
AI is the thread operating by means of a lot of Capita’s defence and public service work. However it’s also the world that draws probably the most scepticism. In recruiting and coaching, the dangers of error are apparent: a misinterpret medical document may wrongly exclude a candidate, whereas over-reliance on automation may weaken security checks. I requested Holroyd immediately whether or not AI in these processes may actually be thought of protected and dependable. He pushed again firmly. “It’s completely protected as a result of it’s not making the choice,” he stated. “The human has to make that call. What AI can do is take away and summarise.”
That precept, he argued, holds whether or not it’s a scan of a medical document or {a photograph} of a tattoo. “We don’t get the core information. We get a scan of the medical document that we will learn. It arrives digitally as an alternative of by means of the publish,” he stated. “You add {a photograph} of your tattoo. You aren’t giving us the info to manage. You might be giving us, of your personal volition, {a photograph} of a tattoo.”
Holroyd additionally acknowledged the bounds. “We’re working within the course of layer, not within the information layer. Actual drive in AI comes when you possibly can entry it within the information layer, as a result of as soon as you might be within the information layer you possibly can pull all kinds of information out and use it to hurry processes. That may be very rigorously guarded. Questions on AI and information are key questions for presidency that haven’t but been resolved.”
Compliance was one other level I pressed. Right here too he drew a tough line. “Something associated to compliance will all the time require a human within the loop,” he stated. “For the time being, we all know Lisa processed that and Ben took the choice. AI will take away an entire load of the work that enables Lisa to spend extra time and Ben to spend extra time. You get higher high quality selections and extra of the backlog moved quicker.”
Contracts, outcomes and velocity
Dialogue of AI rapidly led to the query of contracts. Defence readers will know that the Military and Navy usually are not in need of expertise with long-term outsourcing offers, a lot of which have been criticised for locking in outdated expertise. I requested Holroyd how that actuality squares together with his pitch for quicker digital change.
“Moore’s legislation is a factor of the previous,” he replied. “AI can now transfer so quick that when you give me a six 12 months contract and specify the expertise on day one, will probably be old-fashioned inside a 12 months. Give me an consequence primarily based contract that claims we want you to run this course of, after which we will use present expertise to enhance it and maintain enhancing as we go.” He conceded that that is troublesome inside present business frameworks.
Holroyd drew a distinction between defence and a few civilian departments. The Royal Navy and Military are already demanding faster outcomes: extra troopers educated, extra sailors accessible, much less time wasted on repetitive duties.
By comparability, he argued, components of presidency nonetheless specify inputs fairly than outcomes. One instance he cited was a division with a fraud downside price billions, the place the tender was designed round name centre workers and headsets fairly than analytical instruments. The purpose he needed to drive house was that AI’s worth relies upon not simply on the expertise itself, however on whether or not contracts enable organisations to replace processes at velocity. For Capita, that argument underpins each its defence and public sector work.
Coaching the workforce to make use of the instruments
If AI is to ship at scale, workers have to know easy methods to use it. Holroyd stated Capita has constructed coaching modules for its personal workers to combine the expertise into each day work. One instance he provided was Microsoft Copilot. Whereas on vacation in Corfu, he requested it to summarise the conferences he had missed.
As a result of his staff had used transcription providers, the system produced a listing of selections and linked to the underlying shows. The purpose, he stated, was not the novelty of the device however the productiveness achieve: fewer hours spent catching up, extra time on helpful work.
The identical sample is seen inside Capita’s pensions enterprise. By monitoring keystrokes, the agency recognized how a lot time workers had been spending on repetitive cut-and-paste duties. Automation now performs these steps, whereas workers verify that the knowledge is right. Holroyd introduced this as a microcosm of Capita’s wider philosophy: AI dealing with the routine duties in order that people can concentrate on judgment and high quality management.
The shut
The interview completed the place a lot of it had circled again to: the promise that expertise can velocity processes with out displacing the human position. Holroyd ended with an instance from coaching. “Think about in coaching, we’ve got managed to get extra sailors to the entrance line quicker,” he stated. “There are extra sailors, higher educated, higher outfitted to useful resource our ships. That’s as a result of they’re spending much less time doing much less precious duties.”
The identical argument runs throughout Capita’s portfolio. The corporate says Military recruiting timelines have been reduce, Navy coaching capability and retention improved, transport reductions in London cleared in seconds fairly than days, and native councils recovering hundreds of thousands in unpaid tax.
Holroyd was cautious to border AI as a help, not a substitute. “AI will not be right here to switch the human,” he stated. “It’s right here to free them up for what issues.” He additionally insisted that Capita itself has shifted, distancing the current firm from its previous popularity. “We’ve shifted ourselves radically. We’re not a tech firm, however we’re a tech succesful firm.”
That declare to reinvention is now central to Capita’s pitch. For defence, the take a look at shall be whether or not these efficiencies and new strategies translate into the laborious outcomes ministers and the providers demand.