EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.
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Growth depends on operating models that can absorb change. See how AI-first managed services help make it possible.
Growth is outpacing operating models
Modernizing and scaling the business should not increase operational risk. Yet for many financial services organizations, transformation is happening amid tighter budgets, leaner teams, rising competition and shifting regulatory complexity. AI raises the stakes further: firms need to move faster, but they also need the operating discipline to scale new capabilities safely and turn them into measurable business value.
Building readiness to operate and transform at scale
AI transformation at scale: What gets in the way?
Financial institutions must translate AI ambition into measurable business value while maintaining control in increasingly complex environments. The challenge is not whether to innovate, but how to translate innovation into measurable business value safely, at speed and with the governance required to sustain progress.
Without the right operating model, AI can add complexity faster than it creates value, impacting organizations’ ability to capture growth from new capabilities. Readiness gaps highlight that AI-led transformation across core functions like tax, risk and cybersecurity require an approach that goes beyond technology alone.
Why are organizations failing to realize ROI from AI?
An MIT study shows that, despite global investment of US$30b-US$40b in generative AI (GenAI), 95% of enterprises report no measurable return.
Key barriers include:
(Source: MIT study referenced in “Recoding the core: scaling AI across business functions.”)
Why growth stalls
The operating model is becoming the transformation strategy
Financial services leaders are being asked to run the business with discipline and resilience while also creating room for modernization.
Several pressures are converging at once:
In that environment, modernization often becomes a separate program layered on top of already stretched teams. Change backlogs grow, transformation efforts compete with daily operations and risk can increase rather than decline, delaying the realization of growth and efficiency gains.
The opportunity is to make operational excellence the foundation for transformation, unlocking capacity for sustained growth.
How EY can help
Operate to transform
Operate to transform changes the equation by modernizing core processes as they run. It can help financial institutions reduce friction, strengthen controls and create capacity for higher-value change and accelerated value realization across the business. Rather than treating transformation as an additional burden, this model embeds continuous improvement into daily operations — helping firms advance AI and broader modernization while maintaining the resilience, discipline and confidence the business requires.
