In 2023, the finance industry will emerge from a bruising year of rising inflation, volatile stocks, and rising interest rates. How will firms adapt? To answer this question, Arizent asked 362 financial professionals what they think next year will bring. Their answer is not that the industry will make dramatic changes, but that it will make small ones.
No revolutions are expected from cryptocurrency or ESG, nor do advisors predict the long-awaited "return to the office" after years of remote work. Instead, most foresee an industry fine tuning itself — acquiring new customers, investing more in technology, reducing costs, and making other prosaic adjustments. In other areas, they expect firms to follow the advice many advisors give their clients: "Stay the course." And in terms of outside forces like regulation and mergers and acquisitions, the main forecast is uncertainty.