Banks around the world continue to navigate a complex political environment marked by shifting regulatory regimes, geopolitical uncertainty, and evolving fiscal pressures. In Europe, regulators remain highly focused on resilience in the face of potential geopolitical and economic shocks. In the UK, regulatory attention is rising around market valuations, particularly in technology and AI sectors, while in the US and Canada, macro risks are more closely tied to monetary policy shifts, inflation persistence, and credit quality in sectors such as commercial real estate and consumer credit.
Overall, banks have shown resilient performance last year, but with signs of strain emerging. Banks continue to carry robust capital bases and healthy liquidity buffers. However, profitability in all regions is increasingly sensitive to funding costs, deposit competition, and the transition from rate-driven margins to fee and service-based income. The size of the interest rate tailwinds is diminishing as inflation pressures moderate and rate cuts are being cautiously signaled. In North America, banks with diversified business lines—such as capital markets, wealth management, and transaction banking—are weathering these shifts better than those overly exposed to core deposit funding or sensitive real estate sectors.
Technology and risk management will remain key differentiators. Banks that industrialise AI use cases, especially in customer service, fraud detection, credit decisioning, and compliance, while maintaining strong model risk governance, should see tangible productivity gains. There is also an opportunity to reduce run costs through application rationalisation, legacy modernization, and cloud operating model maturity, although execution risks should not be underestimated.
Celent first articulated five technology-related trends dominating the Banking and Payments industry in the 2025 edition of its flagship Previsory report.
While in the latest edition of that report we focused on three specific developments—AI agents, stablecoins, and open ecosystem—we believe the five topics above remain key areas of focus for most banks, and therefore will continue to inform and guide our research agendas for 2026.
We know many of you also look forward to our flagship annual programs, such as Dimensions surveys offering insights into the ever-evolving bank technology investment priorities (Q1/Q2), detailed case studies on best practice technology adoption in financial services via Model Bank awards (Q2), and Previsories, our take on top technology trends (Q4).
