Financial futures: Leading through disruption

The global financial services industry proved resilient through 2025, despite a turbulent start shaped by ongoing disruption, geopolitical uncertainty and escalating trade tensions.

Despite the unpredictability, markets have performed well. Financial services companies have adopted a cautious approach to contending with volatility but remain determined to move forward with their growth and investment plans.

In this context, we conducted our second Financial Futures survey in late 2025, capturing how senior leaders are navigating four major forces shaping the sector:

• Geopolitical dynamics and international trade conditions
• Digitalization of financial services products and services and AI adoption
• Sustainability priorities and challenges
• Wider regulatory expectations

This latest edition also focuses on geopolitics, recognizing the impact global tensions are having on financial markets, regulatory environments and capital flows.

At a glance

• Financial services leaders are highly confident about the sector’s short-to-medium-term prospects. They’re pressing forward with their growth and investment agendas as they navigate an increasingly complex world.
• They see the strongest growth conditions in Asia Pacific, which is surpassing Europe as the global hotspot.
• Technology sits at the heart of the agenda – driving the most promising opportunities and greatest challenges.
• Compliance challenges are evolving. Keeping pace with regulatory change and jurisdictional divergence is now the defining issue.

• Geopolitics has emerged from the periphery of risk management to become a defining structural force – shaping strategy, operations and growth.
• Capital flows, market access and regulatory compliance are the most acutely affected aspects of business operations.
• Businesses are adopting strategic approaches to geopolitical risk – but with uneven levels of confidence and maturity of execution between regions.

Geopolitical factors affecting financial services firms

• AI is delivering tangible value for financial services companies, with fraud detection generating the greatest value over the past 12 months.
• Data privacy, cybersecurity and ethical use dominate the AI risk landscape.
• Cost pressures and access to skilled talent are the most significant constraints on scaling AI.
• Businesses are responding by investing in core AI technology, upskilling existing teams, and embedding governance and ethical frameworks.

• Sustainability is still a strategic priority: organizations increased ESG spend in 2025 as they pressed forward with the sustainability agenda.
• Sustainable finance remains a clear opportunity. Investment is flowing towards projects that provide measurable outputs and withstand scrutiny.
• But the challenge has shifted from complexity to pace. Keeping up with the speed of change is now the dominant sustainability challenge; concerns over data product innovation have eased.
• Worries about reputational and litigation risk have also receded, as businesses strengthen controls – suggesting sustainability efforts have entered a maturer phase.

Change in Sustainability/ESG spending 2024-5

• Regulation has shifted from a one-off compliance exercise to a continuous operating imperative. Businesses are focused on maintaining governance, data integrity and reporting as the rules evolve.
• The regulatory burden has changed. Fewer leaders are struggling to interpret rules; many more cite managing ongoing compliance as having a significant impact.
• Keeping pace with the speed of regulatory change is now the dominant challenge, overtaking complexity as the biggest friction point across ESG, digitalization and AI legislation.
• Regulatory divergence is increasing, requiring businesses to maintain consistent outcomes while adapting to different local rules – which is driving investment in scalable governance architectures.

Aspects of managing compliance with the greatest expected impact