In 2026, the finance industry will be shaped by three forces that leave little room for complacency: artificial intelligence, economic pressure, and cyber risk. AI is rapidly rewiring how financial institutions make decisions, manage capital, and engage customers. At the same time, persistent macroeconomic strain is squeezing margins and exposing inefficiencies across the sector. Overlaying it all is cyber risk – no longer a back-office concern, but a frontline threat to stability and trust.
We spoke to five experts to understand how these forces are colliding in practice – and what they mean for the year ahead.
- Cyber risk
Cyber attacks have defined 2025 as a new attack hit the headlines almost weekly. The last twelve months have proved that no industry is safe, and that the financial and economic impact of an attack can be disastrous. M&S suffered a loss of roughly £136m as a result of its attack and subsequent downtime, whilst the production halt at Jaguar Land Rover is thought to be at least partly responsible for the UK economy contracting by 0.1% in September.
As Bertijn Eldering, Associate Sales Engineer at HackerOne, puts it:“2025 has shown that cyber risk is financial risk.
“As we move into 2026, financial institutions will need to treat cyber spend less as a sunk cost and more as core protection for earnings, capital, and customer trust,” he warns. “Over the last 12 months, security researchers have proven they can help firms raise their defences by finding and mitigating vulnerabilities before cyber criminals get there. The latest Hacker-Powered Security Report revealed that these researchers saved businesses a total of $128 million in the last year alone. When it comes to cybersecurity, return on mitigation (RoM) should be front and centre for cyber-defence teams.”
Terry Storrar, MD at Leaseweb UK, agrees, adding that financial institutions must be careful when choosing where to store their data to ensure it remains secure: “Finance and trading companies rely heavily on uptime, latency, reliability, security and scale. All of which are non-negotiable when they are looking at where to place their workloads. Data changes in this industry in milliseconds and they are constantly looking at ways to improve performance and security for their clients.”
- Economic pressures
Another defining feature for 2026 is macroeconomic pressure. In 2025, we have witnessed higher-for-longer interest rates, rising costs, and muted growth. These factors will keep margins under strain for the coming months, leaving organisations little choice but to operate lean and make tough trade-offs.
Bruce Martin, CEO of Tax Systems, looks ahead, predicting that “as we move into 2026, UK businesses will remain under intense cost pressure. Inflation may be easing, but prices are still rising, compounding the pressure of higher national insurance and other increasing employment expenses from 2025. Organisations can’t absorb those pressures indefinitely, so they will continue to shape business decisions, constraining investment and slowing recruitment.”
He advises that “businesses will need a sharper view of what genuinely creates value. After years of layering new policies and processes onto existing structures, many organisations are left with a knot of complexity that’s expensive to run and difficult to change. In this case, a reset is good business hygiene, and the most effective leaders will take a more disciplined look at which processes are essential and which can be removed altogether. Organisations that streamline how they operate and equip their people with genuinely effective tools will be best positioned to make confident decisions and move forward with intent.”
- AI
AI has taken the world by storm since the launch of ChatGPT over three years ago – and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Whilst many businesses have spent the past year experimenting with the possibilities of generative AI, even more developments are around the corner, according to Russell Gammon, Chief Innovation Officer at Tax Systems. He foresees that “agentic AI will be one of the most significant shifts over the next year as we start to see more meaningful applications of the technology. We are moving beyond experimentation to genuinely useful and practical deployments of AI agents into workflows to solve real problems.”
He continues: “In the early stages, agents will be deployed in low-risk use cases where trust can be built gradually. Data is one area in particular where agents can add immediate value, freeing up significant amounts of time spent on input and number crunching without disrupting existing controls. As confidence grows, those same agents will start to take on more tasks and responsibilities. One area with significant potential is the review process. Agentic AI can support first and second-level reviews, flagging anomalies, highlighting risks and preparing summaries, which will save a significant amount of time for senior leaders, whose capacity is both limited and extremely valuable.”
Yet, it isn’t just about plugging in the last technology and reaping the benefits. Charis Thomas, Chief Product Officer at Aqilla, explains how “finance teams will now need to learn how to interact with AI.
“2026 will be the year when a new kind of tech literacy becomes essential,” she notes. “Remember how we once had to learn to search the internet effectively by refining queries, judging sources and understanding how information was surfaced? Prompt literacy isn’t about tricks or shortcuts; it’s the modern equivalent of learning how to research properly. As with all computing scenarios, the quality of the question shapes the quality of the answer. Or more colloquially, put rubbish in, and you’ll get rubbish out. Developing that skill across finance teams will be every bit as important as the technology itself.”
She summarises: “So as 2026 unfolds, the dividing line won’t be between organisations that use AI and those that don’t. It will be between those who apply it thoughtfully and those who let AI guide them unquestioningly. The advantage will sit with teams that embrace transparency, develop prompt literacy, apply sound judgement and maintain control as they automate. AI won’t run the finance function. But it will elevate the people who do.”
Preparing for what is next
In 2026, the finance industry will be reshaped by the convergence of AI, sustained economic pressure, and escalating cyber risk. Each presents its own challenges, but together they demand a more agile, disciplined, and resilient approach to leadership. The organisations that succeed will be those that can harness technology responsibly, navigate ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, and protect trust in an increasingly hostile digital environment.
