Financial Services Regulatory Outlook 2026

Global regulatory landscape

In conjunction with our US and APAC Regulatory Centres, this global foreword introduces “The Regulatory Remix”, set to shape financial regulation in 2026.  

As economic and geopolitical uncertainty persists, policymakers will seek to simplify, or in some cases deregulate. Yet we believe such change will be selective, slow, and fragmented. Regulatory reform will also run alongside strengthened oversight in areas including innovation, private markets, and geopolitical risk management.  

The outcome is a more complex, globally fragmented regulatory environment, with significant implications for firms' strategy, risk appetite, and governance. 

Global foreword

As we enter 2026, governments and regulators worldwide are recalibrating financial regulation and supervision in pursuit of their own objectives. This is no “big bang” liberalisation.1 Policymakers are trying to reconcile three powerful, sometimes competing, forces: economic growth challenges, rapid innovation, and a difficult risk outlook. This outlook is increasingly characterised by hybrid risks that cut across financial, operational, technological and geopolitical domains.  

Growth and productivity remain modest in many advanced economies, with inflation lower but still sticky in places. General-purpose technologies adopted by regulated institutions, chiefly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain, promise efficiency and growth but introduce new risks and vulnerabilities. A more volatile geopolitical and trading environment complicates cross-border finance and policymaking. The result is a regulated world in motion: deregulation in some places, simplification in others, new guardrails elsewhere, and divergent speeds and approaches to policymaking.  

Boards and senior management will need to assess how these complex political, economic and regulatory forces reshape their strategies and priorities. A clear risk appetite should steer strategic choices such as investment, technology selection, and operating models in this unpredictable environment. The importance of subsidiary boards is also expected to grow, as diverging global rules, geopolitical considerations, and distinct market conditions elevate the value of decisions taken at local levels. Opportunities will undoubtedly emerge, yet identifying and capturing them may be harder than usual.