The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of UK Finance or its members.

Innovative business models and technologies like AI offer significant potential – but to unlock it, firms need to pursue true transformation, not just incremental change.

Our inaugural World Corporate and Investment Banking 2026 Report is designed to help organisations do exactly that. It provides a clear view of the path ahead, grounded in executive surveys and interviews across banks, corporates, and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) spanning 11 major global markets.

Navigating the shift

Corporate and investment banking (CIB) entered 2026 at a strategic turning point. Revenues are still rising, but growth is slowing – particularly in Europe and the UK, which continue to lag behind Asia-Pacific and the Americas. At the same time, competitive pressure is intensifying as NBFIs scale in private credit and trading, while fintechs increasingly control digital client interfaces. In trading alone, non-banks are projected to represent 30 per cent of global volumes by 2030 – a 10 percentage point jump from 2025.

As for today’s corporate and financial clients? They expect integrated, real‑time, personalised experiences – but only 23 per cent of surveyed clients feel banks are meeting those expectations.

The cost of inertia is mounting. Banks are absorbing growing expenses tied to legacy technology, stricter cyber‑resilience requirements, and expanding data and compliance obligations. At the same time, digital‑native competitors are innovating faster and deepening client engagement. The implications are clear: shrinking client relevance, mounting margin pressure, and widening performance gaps against peers who are successfully strengthening their technology stacks, operating models, and partnerships. 

Marching ahead through innovation

That said, most banks are making steady progress in three key areas:

1. Client engagement: delivering more consistent, seamless, and tailored interactions.
2. Product innovation: investing in advancements like real-time treasury capabilities, GenAI-enabled trading and research tools, and asset tokenisation – which 51 per cent of the banks surveyed said they were exploring.
3. Operational efficiency: targeting manual-heavy processes like KYC, onboarding, transaction reconciliation, data management, and reporting for automation and agentic AI.

The challenge? These gains are still mostly incremental. Many banks flagged that the revenue uplift and cost savings they’d expected haven’t materialised yet. Structural barriers – fragmented data that makes insights hard to surface, legacy systems that consume disproportionate IT budgets, inconsistent AI governance, and risk-averse organisational cultures – all continue to slow progress. 

Until CIBs tackle these foundational issues, transformation will remain slow, costly, and unlikely to deliver the holistic step‑change the industry now requires.

Reimagine the growth journey

Looking ahead, we expect CIBs to evolve into client‑centric capability orchestrators – combining regulatory strength with secure, scalable digital capabilities. This future model will stand on four interconnected pillars:

1. A client-centric, connected business model that enables rapid change and consistent service across businesses, products, regions, and ecosystems.
2. Scalable, flexible, and resilient AI-powered workflows, data and technology, where adaptive decisioning and self-optimising processes augment human judgment.
3. A trusted digital partner framework with robust governance that embeds security, resilience, compliance, and flexibility into every interaction.
4. Culture and people who empower innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning.

To reach this future state, incremental progress won’t be enough. Instead, banks will need to:

• Redesign their end-to-end operating models
• Rebuild their data and technology foundations
• Scale AI responsibly through transparent, permissioned governance
• Reimagine their talent and culture for the AI‑enabled era

These ideas aren’t entirely new, but they must now be sharpened, accelerated, and anchored in a truly client-centric ambition – one that leverages innovative technologies like AI to drive transformation. Achieving this requires breaking down the long-standing barriers that have hindered deep modernisation across data, technology, and people.

Banks that act decisively will define the next decade of leadership in CIB. Get ready to lead – read the full World Corporate and Investment Banking Report 2026 today.