Drawing on our UK C-suite barometer: 2026 mid-year insights, a picture emerges for the UK FS sector that is confident, but selectively so, and increasingly defined by technology, regulation and the recruitment of specialist skills.
92% of C-suite executives globally, across industries, are optimistic about growth in our recent global pulse survey. However, that confidence is not uniform.
In the UK FS sector, we are seeing larger firms have high confidence in their ability to grow, with a particular focus on M&A activity to underpin this. On the other hand, smaller organisations in the sector have a more measured optimism as regulatory constraints and discrepancies between countries become more difficult to manage without scale.
The FS sector has weathered repeated crises, and each one has tended to leave survivors leaner and stronger. Firms in the sector use crises to reinforce their processes and efficiency. A common view in the sector is that the only thing to be certain of is uncertainty. After years of disruption, uncertainty has bred a kind of resilience, and volatility has become business as usual.
When global leaders were asked what was impacting their organisations, three factors dominated: economic trends (40%), artificial intelligence (40%), and energy prices and shortages. But alongside these, UK FS firms are emphasising addressing difficulties in skilled workforce recruitment.
However, there is an important nuance to the talent question. The problem is not a shortage of skilled people; it is a shortage of the “right” skills. The areas where talent demand is higher – AI, digital assets and blockchain – are the same ones where talent is not widely available. In other words, growth can be increasingly constrained by access to specialist skills rather than capital.
The traditional skill sets we’re used to seeing at financial institutions aren’t what they’re looking for today. Firms want people who are more technology-enabled or AI-driven, and that’s a scarce resource everyone is chasing.
Gregory Marchat Partner - Group Financial Services Leader
For UK FS organisations, technology transformation is a key focus. In our 2026 UK C-suite Barometer, conducted in late 2025, 94% of UK FS firms identified having a technology transformation strategy as the sector’s top strategic priority, alongside alternative funding models, such as private equity, and adaptation to competition and trade tariffs. In the six months since that survey, these areas remain a key area of focus for firms in the sector.
AI sits at the centre of this. Global executives across industries see it as a key driver of digital transformation success, with 72% of survey respondents in our C-suite Barometer 2026 mid-year insights investing in its use and adoption, and this is no different for the UK FS sector.
The C-suite Barometer 2026 mid-year data shows 63% of organisations across sectors reporting up to 10% productivity gains from AI investment. But in FS, the returns are measurable but often harder to pin down.
The issue is not AI fatigue but a tendency to deploy AI as a solution in search of a problem. Financial institutions moved early and ran a large number of proof-of-concept projects without always being clear about the intended outcome. However, recently organisations have set clearer objectives for their AI-enabled projects where the genuine benefits, chiefly efficiency, can be tracked and measured, leading to enhanced ROI overall.
The key thing is to define what the problem is, not to try to put AI everywhere to ensure ROI
Gregory Marchat Partner - Group Financial Services Leader
What we are now seeing is a natural reset. After an initial wave of experimentation, financial institutions are under pressure to rationalise their AI portfolios, prioritise use cases with measurable outcomes, and industrialise what works. This is less about deploying more AI and more about extracting value from what has already been built.
AI in the sector is also being used to enhance the efficiency of people, specifically, to enhance what people are doing rather than replace them. Heavy regulation in the sector means a human must validate AI outputs; the duty to prove and control results is non-negotiable. As a result, AI will more likely result in a growth of the workforce rather than a reduction in headcount, with work shifting between offshore delivery centres as some processes become automated and others are optimised.
Across industries, investment is becoming more targeted and FS firms are no exception. Financial investment, putting capital to work in volatile, favourable markets, remains buoyant; many institutions have posted strong results precisely because volatility benefits investors. Investment in the future of FS organisations, however, has slowed.
The pipeline of new change projects has slowed down with some firms postponing regulatory and risk-system overhauls. But this is clearly only a delay, not a complete halt and importantly, it is deliberate. With AI moving so fast, firms might find it more beneficial to wait, clearly refine what change means and optimise their investment to benefit from new technologies not just in the here and now, but also in the medium and long term.
If one theme dominates the medium-term agenda of FS leaders, it is regulatory divergence. International firms are navigating deregulation in the US, overregulation in Europe and a middle-ground approach in the UK. Managing compliance across territories with diverging local laws, regulations and taxes is a significant challenge for firms operating or looking to expand abroad.
Still, global expansion of FS firms continues with C-suite leaders increasingly looking towards the APAC region in search of growth. With trade in those regions expected to increase throughout the rest of 2026.
Overall, drawing on the themes from our C-suite Barometer 2026 mid-year insights, the direction of travel for the UK FS sector is consistent with the key themes. The UK FS sector is becoming:
FS organisations are fundamentally technology businesses. The imperative is not to discard legacy infrastructure but to modernise it and to get the data foundations right.
You can have a high-performance AI system, but if you don’t have reliable data, it won’t bring you the benefits you are expecting nor achieve the goals you have set
Gregory Marchat Partner - Group Financial Services Leader
Leaders in the sector have an ever-changing and ever-increasing list of priorities to balance. Still, to ensure resiliency and readiness, they should:
Get in touch with our financial services experts |
Diversification emerges as the critical condition for growth
This website uses cookies.
Some of these cookies are necessary, while others help us analyse our traffic, serve advertising and deliver customised experiences for you.
For more information on the cookies we use, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
This website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Analytical cookies help us enhance our website by collecting information on its usage.
We use marketing cookies to increase the relevancy of our advertising campaigns.