Finastra: «AI Has Become a Non-Negotiable Priority»
Virtually no player in the financial industry globally is not utilizing artificial intelligence, according to a report by British financial software provider Finastra, but progress and focus vary across markets.
Only 2 percent of financial institutions say they’re not using artificial intelligence and have no plans to start, according to a report by Finastra entitled «Financial Services State of the Nation 2026».
31 percent of respondents said they have scaled deployment across multiple functions, while 30 percent have limited production deployment and 27 percent are in the process of piloting or testing in limited functions.
By markets, Vietnam reported the highest levels of active AI deployment at 74 percent, while Japan is a laggard (39 percent) likely due to its «cautious approach to technological change, legacy system constraints, and a preference for incremental innovation over rapid deployment».
Varying Local Priorities
Despite mass adoption, the focus areas vary depending on the local priorities. Singapore, for example, is placing emphasis on compliance and regulatory processes (43 percent) while the UK is focused on generating better insights (42 percent) by leveraging data and positioning AI as a decision‑making partner.
Globally, the top primary objective for implementing AI was to improve accuracy and reduce errors, as agreed by 40 percent of respondents, followed by increasing employee productivity for non-developer roles (37 percent) and increasing processing speed for payments nd lending (36 percent).
«It’s clear that what was once a frontier technology, faced with undeniable skepticism, is now embedded across the banking value chain, reshaping trust, efficiency and customer experience,» the report said. «AI has become a non-negotiable priority for financial institutions worldwide.»
The report was based on a survey in November 2025 of 1,509 managers and executives from banks and financial institutions across 11 markets including France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UAE, UK, the US and Vietnam. Collectively, the organizations manage over $100 trillion in assets, employ around 5 million staff and serve approximately 400 million client, customer, or member relationships.
