The Future of Finance 2026: Time to Shift Gears? (Boston Consulting Group)

Summary

• In 2025, financial institutions' total shareholder return (TSR) of 30.2% exceeded that of all other industries, including the tech sector.p.8
• Since late 2022, banks' market capitalization has risen by roughly $5.5 trillion, on the way to the $7 trillion value opportunity.p.13
• Financial institutions still trade at roughly a 40% discount to the market average on price-to-earnings ratio.p.13
• Non-bank financial institutions now account for approximately 20% of global corporate and investment banking revenue pools, up from 9% in 2019 and 16% in 2024, with a base-case trajectory toward 22% by 2030.p.27
• Retail and business banking is expected to grow by 4% annually through 2030, corporate and investment banking by 5% and commercial banking by 6%.p.19
• Financial institutions plan to invest 2% of their revenue in AI in 2026.p.16
• Revolut expanded its customer base by more than 40% over the past 15 months, surpassing 70 million customers in 2026.p.20

Key insights

1. Over the three years from December 2022 to December 2025, specialized and digital banks delivered the strongest TSR, while medium-size and small banks and traditional acquirers lagged significantly.p.8
2. For the first time in many years, the majority of global bank equity is trading above book value, although more than half of individual banks still trade below book.p.8
3. Global financial industry headcount has increased at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 2% over the past three years.p.15
4. One major US financial institution has targeted $1 billion in annual AI value split between revenue uplift and cost reduction.p.17
5. A medium-size European bank improved underwriting staff productivity by 50% and cut time-to-cash to 24 hours after document submission using agentic AI.p.18
6. Personalized pricing can yield an average incremental revenue uplift of roughly 2% to 3% across retail banking products.p.22
7. The NextGenerationEU program is the largest joint EU investment ever, with a potential total volume of €650 billion, creating durable credit demand.p.12
8. Proposed US capital reforms could unlock up to $2.6 trillion in additional lending capacity.p.12