Menzies is a proud member of the HLB network which represents firms in 157 countries and every year they carry out a survey of business leaders.
They included results for specific sectors including Financial Services (FS) and there are some positive messages coming in.
The HLB Survey of Business Leaders 2024 reveals a surge in optimism and confidence among financial sector leaders, despite persisting challenges. After demonstrating resilience during crises, 46% of financial services leaders feel ‘very confident’ about growing their own enterprises, this compares to 36% for global respondents across sectors.
Key Priorities for 2024
The top strategic priorities for the financial sector in 2024 are enhancing operational efficiency (67%) and adopting new technologies (61%). In contrast to global peers, cost reduction is less of a focus (34%), with greater emphasis on investing in human capital.
Embracing AI
Unsurprisingly, AI gets a lot of mentions across all sectors, though FS firms mentioned it in 79% cases, vs 65% across all sectors. It is seen as the most important technology for financial services businesses in the next five years.
The financial services sector is in the “learning mode” phase of AI maturity, prioritising understanding AI technologies over leading, integrating or optimising. It is seen as a key way to improve operational efficiency, and there-by increase productivity, additionally the huge amount of data held by FS businesses is an opportunity that many are aware of, subject to concerns ensuring that data security is maintained.
Summary
HLB’s full article is available here and delves further into some of the points noted above.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via the contact form below. Whilst we don’t have the answers to the AI conundrum, we can assist with other software options to help improve the day-to-day running of the business and would be happy to discuss your plans and how we can help guide you.
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