As agentic AI scales, those with the strongest foundations will see its true value 

The era of agentic AI is redefining how financial services operates. What began as isolated deployments is rapidly evolving into enterprise-scale, agent ecosystems that can coordinate workflows, automate decisions, and execute actions across business, technology, and customer functions. Today, 59% of firms are already piloting or deploying multi-agent systems, and 10% have achieved enterprise-wide orchestration that enables autonomous business execution at scale.1

As this scales, cloud is evolving beyond infrastructure into an execution authority for autonomous systems: indeed, it is the foundation that lets agents act at scale, stay within trusted boundaries, and turn actions into measurable outcomes. Cloud now acts as the data spine, control plane, and governance fabric that enables trusted execution at scale. Regulatory requirements, data residency, and compliance certifications are the leading cloud-selection criteria, cited by 50% of executives, followed by security and identity management (47%), and auditability and traceability (39%). 1

The new World Cloud Report for Financial Services draws on insights from two primary sources – the Global Financial Services Executive Survey and the Global Executive Interviews. This research includes insights from 14 markets: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

  • Our Global Financial Services Executive Survey polled 1,100 leaders of financial services firms about the evolution of AI in financial services and the changing role of cloud platforms. Respondents represented seven financial services domains – retail banking, wealth management, payments, corporate and investment banking, P&C insurance, life insurance, and health insurance – with balanced participation from each. 
  • The report also includes insights from focused interviews completed with cloud experts holding leadership positions across financial services and cloud ecosystem firms around the globe. These interviews included senior executives from banks, insurance companies, and hyperscalers.

Despite AI momentum, only a small group of leaders about 5% has reached enterprise-wide agentic maturity, based on our assessment across five key dimensions: orchestration and deployment; governance, trust and autonomy; AI cloud infrastructure execution authority; security and identity; and operating discipline and outcome economics. These firms operate very differently than the rest across three mutually reinforcing strategic priorities: 

  1. Orchestrate agentic AI across the enterprise: More than half (51%) of leaders operate enterprise-wide, multi-agent orchestration, as opposed to only 8% of the rest of the firms. 
  1. Build the cloud foundation for trusted AI at scale: A full 94% of leaders embed enterprise governance through automated enforcement or policy-as-code, compared with 43% of their competitors. 
  1. Connect cloud-AI investment to measurable value: 83% of leaders institutionalize or optimize outcome accountability, as compared with only 25% of other organizations. 1

Enterprise-wide success requires cloud AI investment and coordinated progress across orchestration, cloud architecture, security, governance, and business accountability.

Download the report below, or continue reading to explore key highlights from the research. 

Download the report