Financial services is spending on AI faster than any other sector – and struggling to show for it
The findings, drawn from 235 financial services and insurance C-suite executives within a global survey of 1,500 conducted by Censuswide in July 2026, raise a pointed question for Canadian wealth management professionals already navigating the industry’s AI moment: where is all that money going, and is it creating lasting capability?
Investment is outrunning readiness
The research points to people and processes as the primary bottleneck. Seventy-eight per cent of financial services and insurance respondents agreed that human and operational factors limit the value organisations extract from AI more than technology does.
That finding will resonate with Canadian advisors who have watched AI spending accelerate across major wealth management platforms, even as the practical questions of workflow integration and employee readiness remain unresolved.
Philip Otley, Global Managing Partner at HTEC, put it directly: “Financial institutions are investing heavily, but technology alone does not determine whether AI creates value. Results depend heavily on what happens around the technology: how AI is integrated into workflows, who owns the outcome, and whether employees are equipped to use it consistently.”
There is also a disconnect in how the sector measures success. Thirty-four per cent of firms require a formal return-on-investment model before an AI initiative is approved, while 29 per cent assess returns only after implementation – suggesting that for a significant portion of the industry, value measurement is an afterthought rather than a design principle.
