State of Financial Services Engineering

93% of Engineering Roadmaps Are Modernization. Here's What That Means for Your Team.

Gartner predicts more than 70% of 2026 agentic-AI-led mainframe exit projects will fail due to overestimation of AI capabilities. Our data shows exactly why.

Financial services engineering is running at capacity on structural debt paydown, with almost nothing left for the feature work customers can actually feel. Across 100+ roadmaps from insurers, banks, and asset managers, 93% of every project is modernization. The remaining 7% is everything else combined.

This report maps where financial services roadmaps stand today, what the data reveals about why agentic AI tools fall short at enterprise scale, and why the institutions that finish modernization first will reach the AI-native feature layer years ahead of everyone else.