Known
Unknowns

Foreword

The future of financial services will be determined less by technology itself than by the strategic choices leaders make in the next few years.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to reset the economics of the industry — reshaping cost structures, redefining customer interaction, and reallocating value across the financial system at unprecedented speed. At the same time, forces such as stablecoins, regulatory realignment, and geopolitical fragmentation are challenging long-standing assumptions about how financial institutions fund themselves, reach customers, and deploy capital.

The industry enters this moment from a position of strength. Performance is solid, valuations have rebounded, and capital levels are high. Yet this stability masks a deeper vulnerability: Many institutions are responding to structural change with incremental strategies — treating AI as a productivity tool rather than as a catalyst for operating-model and business-model redesign.

The central issue is not whether AI will transform financial services — it will. The real questions are who will control the customer relationship, who will be trusted to act on clients’ behalf, and who will capture economic value in an increasingly automated financial system.

In our work with financial institutions globally, we see a growing gap between ambition and readiness. Investment in AI is accelerating, but organizational models, governance, and client strategies are not keeping pace. Meanwhile, new technologies and intermediaries are positioning themselves between banks and their customers, threatening to erode differentiation and compress returns.

Financial institutions do, however, retain a powerful and underutilized advantage: trust. Customers trust banks to safeguard assets and data, interpret intent, and take accountability when things go wrong. In a world where AI systems are fast but imperfect, that trust can become a vital competitive advantage — if institutions choose to deploy it deliberately.

This report explores five debates that will shape the industry’s trajectory: whether AI will run the bank, whether stablecoins will disrupt funding and payments, whether AI agents will separate banks from customers, whether trust can be translated into durable advantage, and what happens if the AI investment cycle reverses.

The window for decisive action is narrow. Institutions that confront these questions honestly and redesign their business models for an AI-enabled future will strengthen their relevance and returns. Those that do not may discover that today’s strength was temporary — and that the future arrived faster than expected.