In the financial sector, business leaders face a great amount of uncertainty in the marketplace. They're having to be agile and resilient as they look for growth opportunities and be ready to adjust their business models accordingly.
In the HLB Survey of Business Leaders 2025, we've taken a deep dive into this subject to assess the priorities and perspectives of financial sector leaders. Along the way, we've discovered that leaders are confident but still cautious, as they consider the challenges ahead, but what are some of the key findings from our survey?
Respondents show measured confidence in both business and global growth. Still, 47% of them expect the world economy to grow in 2025, which is a considerable improvement from last year when more than 25% expected it to decline. Looking at their own companies, 88% remain confident in growth and this finding is particularly strong in North America, India, Brazil, and South Africa.
A key driver of growth is likely to be automation. The leaders feel that they need to transform customer experience if they really want to drive a competitive advantage and appear resilient.
The leaders are not as concerned about external risks as they were last year, perhaps to do with lower interest rates and inflation levels. Many companies have become more resilient, due to the various crises they’ve experienced, from financial to COVID-19.
These worries are why 62% of leaders intend to increase investment so they can enhance cybersecurity and IT infrastructure. Those companies with the highest margin of growth in the sample are very likely to increase such investment, at 84%.
Geopolitical risks (including wars and conflicts) remain front of mind for 66% of leaders. Meanwhile, 64% and 57% respectively say that their primary worry is either regulatory change or tax risk.
Economic uncertainty remains the top worry, as 78% of financial services leaders confirmed, with cybersecurity a close second at 74%
When it comes to acting, 69% of leaders want to improve operational efficiency. 39% of them consider that they are “weak” in this area and need to address the problem. One-third believe that they need to work on talent acquisition and 31% circle back to cybersecurity as their weak spot.
The majority expect challenges if they are to be fit for future operations. 79% of the leaders feel that their business models need improvement and only 21% of them feel satisfied.
To make improvements, more than half plan to upgrade their technology systems. 47% will streamline their processes so they can eliminate any redundancies and standardise operations, while 45% will enhance their data analytics capabilities.
Of course, AI is in the spotlight when it comes to data analytics. It is “streamlining basic tasks that used to take thousands of staff hours and now doesn't take any staff hours at all,” according to one leader in North America. He credits AI with delivering a positive impact on business profitability.
Around 65% of leaders will streamline processes through the use of AI. One CEO in the Asia Pacific region sees AI as the “best tool to do any work efficiently and effectively within limited resources and time.”
AI is also helping to strengthen risk management, and many leaders will use it to automate compliance and risk management. 70% of leaders intend to roll up their sleeves here.
If improvements in operational efficiency get the most attention, new technologies come in a close second. Here, AI and cloud computing are at the top of the list for companies through the next five years, with 83% citing AI as the most important tech and 63% citing cloud computing. More than a third of respondents named machine learning and robotics process automation.
It’s interesting to see where leaders are on their AI maturity and transformation journey. 39% of them consider themselves AI innovators, and about 47% AI explorers. This latter group is willing to try AI technologies if they can see a convincing business case. A smaller group, 14%, are not so sure and are AI conservatives.
Of those at the forefront, the innovators, most of them are actively exploring new AI technologies or already using them as part of their daily operations. For example, they use AI to summarise large or complicated documents, while performing checks and balances. This allows leaders to “focus on interpreting and providing insights, rather than routine checking,” according to two CEOs in Europe.
Other leaders are using AI to support process automation (41%) or content generation (34%). ChatGPT has been a game changer in many areas, with this and other tools in use to generate marketing and advertising content. In fact, AI use in content generation is up a whopping 17 percentage points over last year.
Elsewhere, 32% use AI for employee training and development, with 31% using it for customer analytics. More than a fifth of respondents use it for customer service, R&D and sales and marketing. For example, one CISO in the Middle East and Africa uses AI to modify rates “using adaptive pricing algorithms in response to demand and market conditions.”
The third priority for leaders in 2025 involves a focus on people, and this is 16 percentage points higher than last year. Crucially, 60% of leaders feel that their people are only “mostly” productive, may be missing targets or even disengaged.
To combat this, 45% of leaders want to improve how they use performance management and 44% want to upgrade people engagement. Many are using AI to support these activities.
In terms of investment to support people and the workforce, 52% want to push resources into upskilling and reskilling programmes. Many people will be using AI to support their recruitment activities, while 42% intend to give increased remuneration to current staff.
55% of financial services leaders are focusing on training & development to help improve both company culture and purpose.
One thing is clear - it will be important to find the right balance between competing priorities to ensure future business success in this sector. Early adopters are now starting to see the benefits of technology investment, while the rest of the field is playing catch up.
In this survey, HLB also asked respondents about their profit margins. Analysing the 37 most profitable businesses in this sector (with a profit margin increases of more than 5%, year-on-year) provides some interesting insights.
This subgroup, are more forward-looking, technology-driven, and talent centric than their peers. 84% are increasing their investment in enhancing cybersecurity and IT infrastructure, versus only 46% of their peers. 87% will increase their budget around automation and digitalization, while also investing more in their general people development.
Compared to their peers, the high achievers are fully focused on AI and algorithms to automate and enhance their business operations. Many are using AI for office automation, compliance, and risk management and as one CEO in LATAM puts it: “AI supports risk management analysis and (seeking out) business opportunity.”
HLB is a leading global network of advisory and accounting firms. We conducted the HLB Survey of Business Leaders 2025 so that we can help businesses transform and thrive in an ever-evolving financial landscape.
Find out why so many business leaders trust HLB to guide them through 2025 and get in touch with our expert teams across the world.
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