What Will Happen to Financial Sector AI Budgets in 2026?

AI budgets in the banking and capital markets sector are set to leap in 2026, according to research by Capgemini Research Institute. 

The proportion of the total business budget allocated to expenditure on AI is forecast to increase from 3% in 2025 to 5% in 2026, its researchers found, based on a survey of executive-level respondents in more than 1,500 organisations.

Organisations are increasing spend as the cost of not scaling becomes clear, Capgemini says.

Two-thirds (66%) of companies believe that if they fail to scale AI as rapidly as their competitors, they risk missing strategic opportunities and losing their competitive edge.

“We have now entered a new, more pragmatic and realistic era of AI-driven transformation, focused on longer-term, enterprise-wide implementations to improve not just productivity, but revenue, customer experience, risk management, innovation or decision-making,” says Pascal Brier, Chief Innovation Officer at Capgemini. 

Not whether, but how

“AI has now crossed a critical threshold: the question is no longer whether to pursue AI, but how to embed it into the fabric of the enterprise,” Pascal continues. 

“As we enter 2026, many organisations are rightly prioritising strong AI foundations – data, governance and human-AI chemistry – but one other area stands out as a critical factor in successful AI deployments: leadership readiness. 

“AI use is also now informing strategic decision-making. How leaders set a clear vision for its use across the enterprise – and take responsibility for it – will be key to effectively harness its transformative power,” Pascal says.

Overall, businesses will be focused this year on infrastructure, data, governance and workforce upskilling, Capgemini establishes.

In terms of measuring success, the metrics are changing.

Operational efficiency and cost reduction aren’t the only benchmarks: instead revenue growth, risk management and compliance, knowledge management and customer experience and personalisation are relevant. 

The other factor called out by Capgemini is data sovereignty, with more than half of organisations now prioritising data sovereignty, ensuring that sensitive or regulated data remains under their control.

But the top KPI is return on investment, or business value, cited by 73% of respondents as important.

Multi-year programme

Goldman Sachs is clear on the KPIs.

Its CEO David Solomon says, “This is a multi-year effort that we will build over time, and we plan to measure our progress across six goals: enhancing client experience, improving profitability, driving productivity and efficiency, strengthening resilience and capacity to scale, enriching the employee experience and bolstering risk management.”

Terah Lyons, Managing Director and Global Head of AI & Data Policy at JPMorgan Chase, points out that AI has made a transformative impact across its organisation. 

“[AI has] significantly reduced false positives – there are fewer times our customers are having to make calls to try to make corrections. It supports enhanced security, cybersecurity, and fraud security for the firm,” Terah says. 

“It also supports a more effective, stable global system overall, to have these tools actually in the public sector on the other side of the table, enabling and supporting banks in that aspect of risk management.”

The financial services sector has been grappling with the question of how to deploy cutting-edge AI technology in what is one of the world's most regulated industries. 

Richard Harmon, Vice President and Global Head of Financial Services at RedHat, says that organisations in the sector need to “balance the use of sophisticated algorithms and tools as part of a solution, with the corresponding regulatory and compliance requirements, as well as a key requirement for enhanced explainability capabilities”.

Christie Chang, CEO of Citi Taiwan, has underlined the importance of how AI is largely re-shaping how the company operates.