2026 banking and capital markets outlook

Michael Wolf, “United States economic forecast,” Deloitte Insights, Sept. 30, 2025.

Center for Microeconomic Data, “Household debt and credit report (Q2 2025),” Federal Reserve Bank of New York, accessed Sept. 8, 2025.

Katherine Hamilton and Alison Sider, “The middle class vibe has shifted from secure to squeezed,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 31, 2025.

Bank of America, “Consumer checkpoint: Early wrinkles for younger spenders,” Sept. 9, 2025.

Michael Wolf, “United States economic forecast.”

Reuters, “Big US investments announced at Trump’s tech and AI summit,” July 16, 2025.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment situation summary,” press release, Sept. 5, 2025.

Michael Wolf, “United States economic forecast.”

Ibid.

Ibid; Niket Nishant and Manya Saini, “Explainer: What does a steep US yield curve mean for banks and the economy?” Reuters, Sept. 4, 2025.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services analysis of the S&P market intelligence database.

Ibid.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services forecast.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services analysis of the S&P market intelligence database.

Kathy Feucht, Sally Ann Flood, and Tim Coy, “2026 Commercial Real Estate Outlook,” Deloitte Insights, Sept. 29, 2025.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services analysis of the S&P market intelligence database.

The Federal Reserve, “The July 2025 senior loan officer opinion survey on bank lending practices,” Aug. 4, 2025.

Zain Tariq and Nathan Stovall, “US banks maintain favorable earnings while confronting economic uncertainty,” S&P Global, July 25, 2025.

Marina Dunbar, “One in three student loan borrowers risk default as delinquency rates soar,” The Guardian, June 24, 2025.

Natixis Investment Managers, “2025 wealth industry survey: Wealth management industry outlook,” March 24, 2025.

Multiple US banks’ Q2 2025 earnings transcripts.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services analysis of the S&P market intelligence database.

Christy Tan and Lukasz Labedzki, “Under the macroscope: Why cutting the SLR matters,” Franklin Templeton, June 30, 2025.

The data is calculated using raw data from S&P market intelligence.

Firdaus Ibrahim, “European banks 2025 outlook: Can the rally extend into 2026?” CFRA Research, Aug. 29, 2025.

Saloni Goel, “European bank stocks surge to highest level since 2008 global financial crisis. What’s behind the bull run?” Mint, Aug. 4, 2025.

Fitch Ratings, “European bank M&A to boost domestic consolidation,” July 29, 2025.

Fitch Ratings, “Several APAC banking sector outlooks weaken amid trade war exposures,” June 19, 2025.

Yuzo Yamaguchi and Beenish Bashir, “Capital raising by Asia-Pacific banks slumps in July amid economic uncertainties,” S&P Global, Sept. 7, 2025.

The White House, “Fact sheet: The President’s working group on digital asset markets releases recommendations to strengthen American leadership in digital financial technology,” July 30, 2025.

Congress-Gov, “S.1582 – GENIUS Act,” accessed Oct. 17, 2025.

Steve Gallucci and John Goff, “Crypto is gaining currency with North American CFOs,” Deloitte Insights, July 31, 2025.

J.P. Morgan, “Introducing JP Morgan Deposit Token (JPMD),” accessed Sept. 8, 2025.

Ledger Insights, “Citi, JP Morgan confirm leaning into stablecoins, tokenized deposits,” July 16, 2025.

Richard Rosenthal et al., “2025 – the year of payment stablecoins: The GENIUS Act is law, now what?” Deloitte, July 2025.

There are many industry projections, including: Ronit Ghose et al., “Digital dollars – banks and public sector drive blockchain adoption,” Citi Institute, April 23, 2025; J.P. Morgan, “What to know about Stablecoins,” Sept. 4, 2025.

Sergio Goschenko, “Stablecoin companies harness loopholes in the GENIUS Act to offer ‘rewards’,” Bitcoin.com News, Aug. 5, 2025.

Rosenthal et al., “2025 – the year of payment stablecoins.”

Ibid.

Gina Heeb and Justin Baer, “Big banks explore venturing into crypto world together with joint stablecoin,” The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2025.

Gina Heeb, “Stablecoin world opens up to main street banks,” The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2025

Ari Pine, “The opportunity in high yield crypto-backed loans,” CoinDesk, Feb. 19, 2025.

Krisztian Sandor, “Paxos applies for national bank trust charter, joining stablecoin issuers Circle, Ripple,” CoinDesk, Aug. 11, 2025.

Rosenthal et al., “2025 – the year of payment stablecoins.”

Penny Crosman, 80% of banks have upped AI spending. Here’s what they’re buying,” American Banker, June 6, 2025.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services insights based on extensive secondary research, interviews with multiple Deloitte subject matter specialists, and US banks’ public announcements, earnings transcripts, 10Qs, 10Ks, investor presentations, press releases, and statements.

Ibid.

Machine learning operations refers to the practices and processes that enable efficient deployment, monitoring, and upkeep of machine learning models in production. Large language model operations is a more specialized branch of this discipline, focused specifically on managing large language models.

Chris Thomas, Ganesh Seetharaman, and Diana Kearns-Manolatos, “AI workloads are surging. What does that mean for computing?” Deloitte Insights, Aug. 21, 2025.

Aarif Nakhooda, “Beyond traditional ROI: A smarter way to measure AI value,” CFO Dive, July 15, 2025.

Ryan Lockard, Val Srinivas, and Abhinav Chauhan, “AI can help banks unleash a new era of software engineering productivity,” Deloitte Insights, April 24, 2025.

Isla Binnie and Megan Davies, “AI a productivity boost to banks but making money from it is a challenge,” Reuters, Dec. 12, 2024.

Colin Gilbert et al., “2025 Evident AI index,” Evident Insights, Oct. 7, 2025.

Anthropic, “Claude for financial services,” July 15, 2025.

Thanos Konstantinidis, Giorgos Iacovides, Mingxue Xu, Tony G. Constantinides, and Danilo Mandic, “FinLlama: Financial sentiment classification for algorithmic trading applications,” ArXiv, March 18, 2024.

The Economist, “Faith in God-like large language models is waning,” Sept. 8, 2025.

Prakul Sharma, Val Srinivas, and Abhinav Chauhan, “How banks can supercharge intelligent automation with agentic AI,” Deloitte Insights, Aug. 14, 2025.

Ibid.

Deloitte, “Banking & capital markets data and analytics survey,” accessed Oct. 17, 2025.

Profisee, “2024 Harvard Business Review analytic services report on the age of AI,” Nov. 18, 2024.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services review based on information obtained from the top 40 US banks’ public announcements, earnings transcripts, 10Qs, 10Ks, investor presentations, press releases, and statements, as well as extensive secondary research and interviews with multiple Deloitte subject matter specialists.

LSEG, “LSEG global cloud survey: Financial services firms embrace cloud to drive competitiveness,” July 14, 2025.

Matt Ashare, “Citi eyes AI productivity gains as it consolidates data systems,” CIO Dive, April 17, 2025.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services review based on extensive secondary research and interviews with multiple Deloitte subject matter specialists.

BNY, “Our commitment to the responsible, ethical use of data and AI,” accessed Oct. 21, 2025.

J.P. Morgan, “J.P. Morgan launches private markets data solutions for institutional investors,” press release, Oct. 22, 2024.

Deloitte, “Banking & capital markets data and analytics survey.”

Ibid.

Deloitte Center for Financial Services review based on information obtained from the top 40 banks’ public announcements, earnings transcripts, 10Qs, 10Ks, investor presentations, press releases, and statements, as well as extensive secondary research and interviews with multiple Deloitte subject matter specialists.

HSBC, “HSBC’s principles for the ethical use of data and AI,” July 15, 2024.

Jeff Shortis and Frank Smietana, “Achieving a new standard in data quality with AI,” State Street, October 2024.

Laurie Harris, “Regulating artificial intelligence: US and international approaches and considerations for Congress,” Congree-Gov, June 4, 2025.

Riya Deb, Nicole Mazullo, and Lindsey Harvey, “Enforcement action trends: Insights for 2025,” Crowe Insights, April 25, 2025.

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), “Year in review for fiscal year 2024,” July 2025.

FinCEN, “Statement by FinCEN Director Andrea M. Gacki before the house committee on financial services, subcommittee on national security, illicit finance, and international financial institutions,” testimony, Sept. 9, 2025.

FinCEN, “Financial trend analysis,” April 2025.

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, “Protecting customer financial records,” Sept. 8, 2025.

The White House, “Strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology,” August 2025.

Ibid.

Alisher Abdullaev, Andrei Loshchev, and Maxim Baldakov, “The dark side of automation and rise of AI Agents: Emerging risks of card testing attacks,” Group-IB, Feb. 5, 2025.

Deloitte UK, “The strategic role of Technology and AI in the future of financial crime risk management,” March 21, 2025.

Ibid.

Matthew Hovis, “Mind the gaps: Recent enforcement actions and what they say about AML/CFT data management,” Wipfli, Nov. 18, 2024.

US Department of the Treasury, “Deputy Secretary Faulkender lays out guiding principles for Bank Secrecy Act modernization,” press release, June 18, 2025.

FinCEN, “Frequently asked questions regarding suspicious activity reporting requirements,” Oct. 9, 2025.

Nupur Anand and Lananh Nguyen, “Exclusive: US regulators cancel bank exams as Trump rollback gathers pace,” Reuters, Sept. 2, 2025.

US Department of the Treasury, “Deputy Secretary Faulkender lays out guiding principles for Bank Secrecy Act modernization.”

Deloitte Malta, “Moving to a single, client-centric view of risk,” April 2, 2025; Deloitte UK, “The strategic role of technology and AI in the future of financial crime risk management.”

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