From pilots to scale: How financial services firms invest in technology

Cloud and unified data platforms

Cloud and unified data platforms led the charge. Major banks and insurers migrated significant workloads to AWS, Azure, and GCP, signing multi-year agreements for customer data platforms and analytics. The goal was clear: consolidate fragmented customer and transaction data into unified platforms. Cloud modernization and data consolidation emerged as the top priority, as firms sought to establish a single source of truth for analytics, decision-making and customer engagement.

GenAI at Scale

GenAI also witnessed a breakthrough in 2025. Financial firms moved beyond pilots to commercial deployments across virtual agents, document ingestion for KYC and loan processing, model-assisted underwriting and fraud detection. For GCCs in India, GenAI projects were among the largest expenditure drivers, fueling substantial hiring to support scaled implementations. AI was no longer experimental, it became a core tool for driving efficiency, accuracy and customer engagement.

Cybersecurity, fraud and resilience

Cybersecurity, fraud and resilience continued to attract attention, driven by the expanding attack surface of cloud, AI and open APIs. Firms ramped up budgets for identity management, multi-factor authentication, fraud analytics, SOAR platforms and vendor risk management. GCCs hosted numerous innovation projects, balancing emerging technology initiatives with foundational security investments.

Core modernization, APIs and payments

Core modernization, APIs and payments infrastructure were also high priorities. Replacing or back-ending legacy mainframes, enabling API-driven connectivity for core systems, and adopting real-time payment rails became essential to compete with fintechs and reduce operating costs. Payments orchestration platforms, in particular, allowed incumbents to remain agile and efficient while improving service delivery.

Outlook for 2026

Several trends are taking shape for 2026. AI remains the top priority, but spending is expected to shift from pilots to operationalizing models at scale. Budgets will increasingly focus on MLOps, model monitoring, explainability, and governance, emphasizing measurable ROI from production deployments. Cloud capex growth is likely to moderate, prompting banks to redirect funds toward SaaS, managed services and optimization tools. FinOps, workload right-sizing and cost-per-inference analysis will become critical levers for controlling spend.

Security, resilience and regulatory compliance will continue to drive budgets. As AI becomes embedded in customer-facing and decisioning workflows, regulators and boards will demand stronger governance, auditability and controls, expanding investments in AI governance tools, secure enclaves, identity management and third-party risk solutions.