Banking's AI reckoning: 13 expert predictions for 2026

SAS experts forecast the breakthroughs, blind spots and breaking points that will shape banking – and reveal what institutions aren't ready for

CARY, N.C., Dec. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The AI experiments are over. In 2026, banking enters a new phase – one where autonomous agents handle real customer requests, synthetic data threatens core repositories and trust becomes a measurable performance metric. The question is no longer whether AI will transform banking but whether institutions are prepared for the consequences of the accelerating transformation already underway.

From agentic commerce disputes to quantum-powered risk modeling, SAS experts offer a "banker's dozen," 13 industry-defining predictions that will separate institutions that master intelligent banking from those still struggling with the basics. Here's what's coming – and what banks need to know now.

Verified intelligence becomes the new currency of trust
"AI has made financial institutions faster, smarter and infinitely more confident – sometimes too confident. From credit scoring to fraud detection to customer service, we've trained intelligent systems to decide in milliseconds. But has the industry risked losing sight of its most human principle along the way? Trust must be earned, not assumed.

"In 2026, trust will morph from a promise to a performance metric as banks shift from model-driven to proof-driven intelligence. Demanding verifiable transparency across every prediction, decision and interaction will become the new standard of intelligence. In other words, don't trust this prediction – until you can prove it."

– Alex Kwiatkowski, Director of Global Financial Services, SAS

Agentic AI graduates from promise to production
"2026 will mark the dawn of agentic AI in banking as semiautonomous systems begin to take on meaningful work across the enterprise. The future of intelligent banking will be shaped by AI-driven agents that manage customer requests, orchestrate workflows and make governed, explainable decisions at scale. This shift will fundamentally change how banks design operations and measure the value of AI.

"According to IDC, financial services firms will spend more than $67 billion on AI by 2028. Production deployments tied to decisioning and operations are poised to see the biggest growth. The industry has matured beyond the proof-of-concept, and the banks that succeed will be those that industrialize their AI to turn pilots into profit and governance into competitive advantage."

– Diana Rothfuss, Global Solutions Strategy Director for Risk, Fraud & Compliance Solutions, SAS

"Help! My AI agent went rogue and bought a $900 toaster." Banks inherit the fallout of robo-shopping.
"From call centers to the C-suite, financial institutions will be forced to face the impacts of the rapidly expanding agentic commerce economy. Banks will see a surge in disputes triggered by autonomous AI agents making purchases the customer never approved, and fraud teams will face new risks as criminals learn to hijack or mimic legitimate agents.

"As agentic e-commerce grows, banks must learn to authenticate not only people but also the AI agents acting in their name, adding a new layer of complexity to an already tough financial crimes fight. Frameworks such as agentic tokens, behavioral signatures and dynamic risk scoring represent the first wave of controls banks will need to safeguard their human customers and their bottom line."

– Adam Neiberg, Global Banking Senior Marketing Manager, SAS

Banks erect data purity "vaults" amid synthetic data contamination
"Banks will confront a new kind of data integrity crisis as generative AI and synthetic data seep into core repositories in ways that are difficult to detect. Unlike the isolated data quality issues of the past, GenAI can introduce errors at scale – and with a level of realism that makes contaminated data extremely hard to surface.

"As financial institutions experiment with synthetic data to accelerate model development, many will unknowingly introduce subtle biases and distortions into credit, fraud and risk decisioning pipelines. To protect critical workflows, banks will begin securing their golden source data in controlled digital vaults and impose stricter governance on how GenAI tools can interact with core data sets."

– Ian Holmes, Director and Global Lead for Enterprise Fraud Solutions, SAS

GenAI knowledge agents unlock the potential of unstructured data
"In 2026, generative AI will become for unstructured data what traditional statistics has long been for structured data, giving banks the ability to extract meaning and insight at scale. More than 80% of enterprise data is in unstructured formats like text and images, and this volume is growing 50% to 60% each year.

"Banks will begin adopting knowledge agents powered by large language models and retrieval augmented generation technology to turn previously underused unstructured data into quick, actionable answers. They will use these new insights to accelerate strategic business decisioning and transform risk management into a more proactive, intelligence-driven discipline."

– Terisa Roberts, Global Director for Risk Modeling, Decisioning and Governance, SAS

Romance scams get an agentic upgrade
"Your chances of dating a model have never been higher – a large language model, that is. While AI-powered romance scams already exist, they will surge to record levels as fraudsters weaponize emotional deception at scale. What once required weeks or months of hands-on engagement can now be automated and accelerated with minimal effort.

"As machine-assisted manipulation advances, the line between genuine connection and synthetic seduction will blur further, testing not only fraud defenses but human intuition itself. Financial institutions will be pressed to act as emotional firewalls for their customers, combining behavioral analytics and AI-driven monitoring to detect exploitation patterns before the monetary damage is done." 

– Stu Bradley, Senior Vice President of Risk, Fraud and Compliance Solutions, SAS

AI investment pressures trigger a shakeup in financial crime technology
"The anti-financial crime compliance market will undergo a major shakeup in the year ahead as vendors struggle to embed advanced AI into their offerings. Recent divestitures underscore the scale of reinvestment required to modernize dated, rules-based platforms, leaving many banks with tools that can't keep pace with evolving fraud and money-laundering threats. As the difficulties of bolting AI onto legacy platforms come to light, financial crime technologies built natively on AI platforms will shine brightest.

"In 2026, financial institutions will accelerate adoption of cloud-native, AI-driven AML and fraud solutions that can surface complex patterns. Our latest survey of ACAMS members shows that most institutions already see AI as essential for AML modernization, and banks that migrate toward explainable, real-time analytics will gain significant compliance and risk advantages."

– Beth Herron, Americas Lead for Banking Compliance Solutions, SAS

AI and quant credit will accelerate bond market efficiency
"The growth of quantitative credit strategies will accelerate price discovery in corporate bond markets, catalyzed by AI-assisted models that rapidly incorporate new information, alternative data and forward-looking credit indicators. Active fixed income teams will move beyond ratings-centric workflows and adopt flexible, ML-driven modeling and decisioning infrastructure that translate diverse signals into trading decisions.

"Strong data governance and rigorous model risk management will be the necessary ingredients for this process and technology evolution. Additionally, innovation in credit rating risk modeling will help investors reduce losses and capture opportunities."

– Stas Melnikov, Head of Quantitative Research and Risk Data Solutions, SAS

Bubble-aware risk management should become standard practice in 2026 … but won't
"In 2026, leading banks and asset managers will start embedding bubble-aware models into pricing, ALM and stress testing. These models will explicitly break down the market price of assets into their fundamental drivers, while also examining risk premiums and transient bubble components. Bubble-aware models help firms recognize factors that cause asset prices to rise sharply and unsustainably. And while these models should become part of all banks' standard practice in 2026, I fear – and predict – they will not."

– Robert Jarrow, Advisor and Industry Consultant, Quantitative Research and Risk Data Solutions, SAS

Stablecoins move from theory to practice
"Imagine a US-EU corporate corridor that settles in minutes rather than days. We aren't there yet, but the year ahead will see regulated stablecoins move into real banking pilots. With clearer frameworks in the US and EU, banks will begin testing stablecoins for cross-border settlement and treasury for their inherent benefits: faster fund movement, lower costs and greater transparency. Some banks will also explore tokenized deposits or partnerships with licensed issuers to move money on digital rails with stronger auditability and compliance. These early pilots signal the first meaningful step toward modernizing international payments."

– Ahmed Drissi, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Lead for Asia-Pacific, SAS

Retail banks shift from testing commerce media models to scaling them
"By the end of 2026, every major retail bank will have a media strategy, whether they call it that or not. Banks that quietly tested the model over the past 12 to 18 months will begin reporting measurable revenue gains as advertisers and brands recognize the power of verified financial data. Institutions that operationalize financial media networks could realistically see a 20% to 30% uplift in noninterest income within two years."

– Cornelia Reitinger, Head of Advertising Business Development, SAS

Banks embrace climate risk stress testing
"As the impact of storms, wildfires and droughts on bank portfolios intensifies worldwide, banks face mounting pressure from customers, regulators and shareholders to improve their climate risk management efforts. 2025 saw the first-ever fine for a bank's noncompliance with climate risk regulations. Therefore, I foresee banks stepping up their climate risk stress testing to close gaps in modeling, governance and infrastructure. Its closer integration with banks' core business-as-usual risk management frameworks will be essential to effectively respond to increasing pressures.

"AI-driven automation and integration of stress testing processes will be critical enablers not only for addressing the requirements of climate risk but also other emerging scenario analysis use cases, such as the European Central Bank's recently announced geopolitical risk reverse stress test."

– Peter Plochan, EMEA Principal Risk Management Advisor, SAS

Banking takes a quantum leap
"This will mark the year we see the first impacts that hint at how quantum AI will reshape the banking landscape through the end of the decade. Hybrid quantum-classical computing will move from pilots to production, delivering breakthroughs in risk and fraud – and it will expand the frontier of how banks optimize, simulate and decision, especially in areas where classical models degrade. Banks building early experience will see transformative gains in accuracy, agility and performance that deliver an outsized edge over the competition."

– Julie Muckleroy, Global Banking Strategist, SAS

Explore predictions, discover solutions
AI's impact on banking extends far beyond these 13 predictions. Explore more 2026 technology trends across industries, or discover how SAS banking solutions help financial institutions turn verified intelligence into trusted decisions.

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