Financial Services Industry Statistics 2026: Assets, Jobs and AI

Nonbank financial institutions held $256.8 trillion in assets at the end of 2024, or 51% of total global financial assets, according to the Financial Stability Board. That sector grew 9.4% over the year, double the banking sector’s 4.7%. The crossing point matters more than the headline figure. Most financial services industry statistics rest on bank-regulator releases, and those now describe a minority of the business.

The figures below run from that global aggregate down to US payroll counts, occupational wages and insurance premium forecasts. Payment volumes, regulator-measured AI adoption and reported fraud losses follow. Each comes from the agency or standard-setter that publishes it, with the reporting period named.

Key Takeaways

• Nonbank financial intermediation reached $256.8 trillion in 2024 and holds 51% of total global financial assets, a level the Financial Stability Board describes as similar to pre-pandemic levels.
• US commercial bank total assets climbed to $25.66 trillion in July 2026, from $24.48 trillion twelve months earlier.
• Finance and insurance payrolls fell from 6.6715 million in June 2026 to a preliminary 6.6511 million in August, even as job openings rose to a preliminary 300,000 in July.
• Finance and insurance accounted for 7.3% of US gross domestic product in 2023, on exports of $175.5 billion in financial services.
• Work-related generative AI adoption in the financial sector reached 63%, the highest level in the Federal Reserve’s survey panel.
• Reported losses to the FBI complaint centre hit $20.877 billion across 1,008,597 complaints in 2025.

Editor’s Choice

• Other financial intermediaries, the fastest-growing nonbank sub-sector, grew 11% over the year to $169.4 trillion.
• FDIC-insured institutions earned $90.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026.
• Global assets earmarked for retirement amounted to $53.1 trillion at the close of 2023.
• US noncash payments reached 236.6 billion transactions worth $140.01 trillion in 2024.
• Automated clearing house payments alone carried $104.06 trillion of that value.
• Tokenized real-world assets held $38.76 billion in distributed value.

Global Financial Assets by Sector

• The nonbank financial intermediation sector reached $256.8 trillion in 2024, lifting its share of total global financial assets to 51%.
• Nonbank growth of 9.4% in 2024 ran at double the banking sector’s 4.7% pace.
• Other financial intermediaries, the grouping that covers money market funds, hedge funds, other investment funds, trust companies and structured finance vehicles, grew 11% over the year to $169.4 trillion.
• Pension fund assets grew 7% in 2024, and insurance corporation assets grew 6%.
• The narrow measure of the nonbank sector, covering entities authorities judge to carry bank-like financial stability risks, increased 12% to $76.3 trillion.
• Monitoring by the Financial Stability Board spans 29 jurisdictions accounting for over 90% of global gross domestic product.
• Fixed income and mixed funds showed high degrees of liquidity transformation, while finance companies, broker-dealers and structured finance vehicles displayed high levels of leverage.
• The report flags severe limitations in the availability of data for private credit in statistical and regulatory reports.

Source: Financial Stability Board, Global Monitoring Report on Nonbank Financial Intermediation 2025, December 2025

About This Data

Twenty source records back the figures on this page: eighteen tier-one releases, fifteen from regulators, standard-setters and statistical agencies, plus two on-chain registry captures. Those records resolve to ten distinct publications from eight organisations, because several releases carry more than one figure. Banking figures trace to the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile and payment figures to the Federal Reserve Payments Study. The compilation window runs from December 2025 through September 2026.

The accepted source types run to official statistical releases, one reinsurer’s published research, and one on-chain registry, and no paywalled market-research estimate was used. Figures are updated when the underlying publishers issue new editions.

Don't chase the news. Let us curate it.

You get one weekly briefing with only the stories that matter. If the market is quiet, we skip it.

Email address

Get the Weekly Briefing - it's free!

✅ Join readers from Visa, Mastercard, Vanguard, and the FDIC.

US Commercial Bank Assets and Earnings

• FDIC-insured institutions reported aggregate net income of $90.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of $9.7 billion, or 12.0%, from the prior quarter.
• The industry’s return on assets ratio reached 1.37% across 4,238 insured commercial banks and savings institutions.
• Industry net interest margin increased 1 basis point from the prior quarter to 3.32%.
• Domestic deposits grew 0.8%, the eighth consecutive quarterly increase.
• Loan growth was widespread, increasing 1.8% from the prior quarter and 6.8% from the prior year.
• Net income among community banks increased 8.2% from the prior quarter.
• The Deposit Insurance Fund reserve ratio increased 5 basis points to 1.48%.
• The same series records total assets of 24,770.0 in January 2026, 25,085.9 in March and 25,468.7 in May, in billions of dollars, seasonally adjusted.
• The US banking system held $23.7 trillion in assets at the end of 2023 against a quarterly net income of $38.4 billion, per the International Trade Administration.

Source: FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile, Second Quarter 2026, August 2026

The monthly balance-sheet series behind that quarterly reading follows.

Total assets across all US commercial banks reached $25.66 trillion in July 2026 on a seasonally adjusted basis, up from $24.48 trillion a year earlier. Balance sheets expanded through the first seven months of 2026 without interruption. Earnings grew far faster than the asset base did over the same quarter, so return on assets rose rather than the profit merely tracking a bigger book.

Recent Developments

• August 25, 2026: The FDIC released Quarterly Banking Profile results showing asset quality metrics improved, as both the past-due and nonaccrual rate and the net charge-off rate declined from the prior quarter.
• July 8, 2026: Swiss Re Institute forecast global insurance total premium growth of 1.3% in real terms for 2026, down from 3.9% in 2025.
• July 2026: National payment volumes for calendar years 2015 to 2024 recorded the largest three-year increase in noncash payments since the FRPS began estimating them in 2000.
• April 3, 2026: A Federal Reserve FEDS Note reported work-related generative AI adoption of 63% in the financial sector, the highest level among the sectors measured.
• December 16, 2025: Nonbank assets reached $256.8 trillion, a share of total global financial assets the Financial Stability Board describes as similar to pre-pandemic levels.
• September 4, 2026: The RWA.xyz registry recorded 3,298,276 tokenized asset holders, up 105.37% over the prior 30 days.

Finance and Insurance Employment in the United States

• The financial services and insurance sectors employ more than 6.7 million people in the United States as of mid-2024, according to the International Trade Administration.
• Seasonally adjusted finance and insurance employment fell from 6.6715 million in June 2026 to 6.6511 million in August, on preliminary readings.
• Job openings in the sector rose from 240,000 in May 2026 to a preliminary 300,000 in July.
• Hires fell to a preliminary 104,000 in July from 137,000 in June.
• Separations declined across the same window, from 138,000 in May to a preliminary 114,000 in July.
• The unemployment rate for people previously employed in finance and insurance rose from 2.1% in May 2026 to 3.0% in August.

Worth noting: Payroll counts and vacancy counts moved in opposite directions through mid-2026. Finance and insurance employment fell in July and August after peaking in June while openings climbed from 240 to 300,000, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hiring, not demand, is the constraint the two series point at.

The Sector’s Share of the US Economy

• Finance and insurance represented 7.3% of US gross domestic product in 2023.
• The United States exported $175.5 billion in financial services and $25.0 billion in insurance services in 2023.
• Total foreign direct investment in the US financial services industry reached $573.8 billion in 2023.
• Foreign direct investment supported around 423,000 jobs across the industry in 2022.
• Banking counted 109,816 establishments in 2022 and employed over 1.7 million workers as of mid-2024.
• Asset management counted 83,954 establishments in 2022 and employed approximately 642,000 workers as of mid-2024.

Source: International Trade Administration, SelectUSA Financial Services Industry, 2023 to 2024 data

What are some examples of financial services industries?

Banking under NAICS 5221, asset management under NAICS 5239, and insurance under NAICS 524 are three of the subsectors the International Trade Administration breaks out for the industry. Within those subsectors, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 464,330 insurance sales agents and 462,790 securities, commodities and financial services sales agents. Consumer-facing categories such as contactless payments and robo-advisors sit within credit intermediation and securities, respectively.

Pay and Occupational Mix Across the Sector

• Accountants and auditors earned a median annual wage of $93,290 in 2025 against a mean of $100,150.
• Securities, commodities and financial services sales agents earned a median of $78,160 against a mean of $108,650.
• Loan officers earned a median annual wage of $76,210 and a mean of $86,390.
• Insurance sales agents earned a median of $62,260 against a mean of $81,450.
• Tellers earned a median annual wage of $43,060 and a mean of $42,330.
• Tellers numbered 321,310 in 2025 and loan officers 230,620.
• Accountants and auditors within finance and insurance numbered 119,450.

Accountants sit at the top of this set and tellers at the bottom, with roughly a two-to-one spread between them. The median-to-mean spread is the number worth reading twice. Sales-side roles carry long upper tails from commission. Teller pay sits in a narrow band with no tail at all, which is why the two roles respond so differently when branches close.

Global Insurance Premium Growth

• Global insurance total premium growth is expected to slow to 1.3% in real terms in 2026 from 3.9% in 2025, according to Swiss Re Institute.
• Global non-life premium growth is forecast at 0.6% in real terms for 2026, well below the long-term trend of 3.6% measured as a 2015 to 2024 compound annual growth rate.
• Global life premium growth is expected to stay robust at 2.3% in 2026, supported by higher yields.
• Swiss Re Institute forecasts non-life return on equity of 11.4% in 2026, down from a 14% peak in 2025 and heading to 7.7% in 2028.
• The forecast assumes global inflation averaging 4.0% in 2026 while global gross domestic product growth slows to 2.5%.
• Advanced markets drive the non-life slowdown, while emerging markets remain relatively resilient.

Underwriting margin compresses fastest where pricing softens without claims costs following it down. Rising claims inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and growing catastrophe exposures are likely to limit the depth of the downturn, which Swiss Re Institute expects to be shallower than past soft markets. The same pricing pressure shows up in specialist lines tracked in the cyber insurance premium data.

Retirement and Asset Management Assets

• Global assets earmarked for retirement amounted to $53.1 trillion at the close of 2023, an increase of more than 8% against 2022 year-end pension asset amounts.
• US retirement assets comprised 72.3% of the OECD total, or $38 trillion, at year-end 2023.
• US retirement assets stood at $37.8 trillion in 2022.
• Individual retirement accounts and employer-sponsored defined contribution plans together represented 63% of all retirement market assets at year-end 2022.
• The asset management subsector counted 83,954 establishments as of 2022.
• Foreign direct investment across the whole US financial services industry reached $573.8 billion in 2023.

Source: International Trade Administration, SelectUSA Financial Services Industry, 2022 to 2023 data

Noncash Payment Volume and Channel Mix

• US noncash payments rose to 236.6 billion transactions in 2024, an increase of 31.9 billion from 2021 and the largest three-year increase since the Federal Reserve Payments Study began in 2000.
• The total value of noncash payments rose to $140.01 trillion in 2024, up $10.37 trillion from 2021.
• Growth in value ran at 2.6% per year from 2021 to 2024, well below the 10.4% rate from 2018 to 2021.
• Cards reached 79% of noncash payments by number in 2024, up from 77% in 2021 and 71% in 2015, yet only 8% of total value.
• Automated clearing house payments increased to $104.06 trillion in 2024, lifting the ACH share of total noncash payment value to 74%.
• Check payments fell to 9.2 billion by number and $24.45 trillion by value in 2024, down 1.8 billion and $1.92 trillion from 2021.
• The average value of a check payment rose almost threefold, from $945 in 2000 to $2,653.
• The average value of an ACH credit transfer almost doubled from $2,195 to $3,881 since 2000.

Source: Federal Reserve Payments Study, national payment volumes CY 2015-24, July 2026

Cards carry four-fifths of the transactions and one-twelfth of the money. Volume and value diverge so sharply that card metrics and settlement metrics tell different stories about the same system. The transaction side is tracked in more depth in the digital payments infrastructure data. Installment products such as BNPL sit on top of those same card and ACH rails.

Generative AI Adoption Across Financial Firms

• Work-related generative AI adoption reported in the RPS is highest in the financial sector at 63%, ahead of professional services at 62%.
• The BTOS puts financial-sector AI adoption at about 30%, against a reading of about 33 on the same scale for professional, scientific and technical services.
• The financial sector reported sustained growth of 127%, or 9.3 percentage points, for the year ending in September on the legacy survey series.
• Year-on-year growth in work-related adoption ran at around 30% in the financial and professional services sectors, against about 58% in manufacturing.
• Financial and professional services are the highest-value service sectors measured by output per employee among those the note depicts.
• Swiss Re Institute estimates that hyperscaler capital expenditure on AI should reach $750 billion in 2026 in nominal terms, contributing around 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points to US growth.

Key finding: The Federal Reserve’s April 2026 note puts work-related generative AI adoption in the financial sector at 63%, ahead of every other sector it measures, while firm-level adoption sits near 30%. Workers are adopting the tools faster than their employers are deploying them, and the gap between the two readings is the governance problem.

Two survey instruments measuring the same sector produce a 33-point spread. One counts firms with a deployment, the other counts workers with a habit. Coverage that quotes a single AI adoption number for banking is almost always quoting one of these without saying which. Firm-side spending patterns are tracked separately in the digital transformation data.

Where Reported Fraud Losses Land by Crime Type

• Investment fraud produced $8,648,617,756 in reported losses.
• Business email compromise followed at $3,046,598,558.
• Tech and customer support fraud accounted for $2,134,675,818, and personal data breach for $1,314,923,988.
• Confidence and romance fraud reached $929,287,469, ahead of government impersonation at $797,943,193.
• Intellectual property and counterfeit losses reached $512,146,819, non-payment and non-delivery losses $503,373,587, and data breach losses $435,240,992.
• Ransomware, despite its prominence in security coverage, produced $32,320,105 in directly reported losses.
• Identity theft losses reached $185,832,657 and extortion $122,499,133.

Investment fraud tops the eight largest loss categories by a factor of nearly three over the next one. Ransomware, listed above, lands more than an order of magnitude below the smallest category charted here. Security budgets tend to be allocated the other way round, which is a mismatch worth noticing in any operational risk review.

How Reported Fraud Losses Compounded Since 2020

• Reported losses to the FBI’s complaint center rose from $4.2 billion in 2020 to $20.877 billion in 2025.
• Losses passed $10.3 billion in 2022 and $16.6 billion in 2024.
• The 2025 total represented a 26% increase in losses from 2024.
• The complaint centre logged 1,008,597 complaints in 2025 at an average loss of $20,699.
• Victims aged 60 and over reported $7.7 billion in losses across 201,266 complaints.
• Victims aged 50 to 59 reported $3.7 billion, and those aged 40 to 49 reported $2.957 billion.
• The FBI charts complaints filed with IC3.gov from 2001 through 2025, a series that reaches 1,008,597 complaints.

By the numbers: Reported losses climbed from $4.2 billion in 2020 to $20.877 billion in 2025, close to a fivefold rise, while the FBI logged 1,008,597 complaints at an average loss of $20,699. Complaint counts grew far more slowly than losses, so the money lost per reported incident is what actually moved.

Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report, 2025

Older victims carry a disproportionate share of the dollar total relative to their complaint count. The pattern repeats across retail investing data covering self-directed accounts.

Tokenized Real-World Assets on Institutional Rails

• Distributed asset value across tokenized real-world assets stood at $38.76 billion, up 1.23% over the prior 30 days.
• Represented asset value, the wider measure covering assets referenced on-chain, reached $377.74 billion.
• Total stablecoin value stood at $303.21 billion across 285.65 million stablecoin holders.
• The registry counted 3,298,276 tokenized asset holders, an increase of 105.37% over 30 days.
• BUIDL and USYC each held $2.7 billion among tokenized government securities.
• USDY held $2.2 billion and iBENJI $1.7 billion.
• Tether’s USDT led stablecoins at $192.8 billion, ahead of USDC at $73.1 billion.

Set against the Financial Stability Board’s $256.8 trillion nonbank sector, a $38.76 billion tokenized book rounds to nothing. The reason it earns a section anyway is the holder count, which more than doubled in a month. Its largest positions are money-market and treasury instruments rather than speculative collateral, and the issuers behind them run from established fund managers to crypto-native firms. The custody and settlement side of that shift runs through the venues covered in the crypto exchange market data.

Is financial services a good industry to get into?

The sector is hiring selectively rather than broadly. Job openings rose to a preliminary 300,000 in July 2026 while sector unemployment among people previously employed in finance and insurance sat at 3.0% in August. Pay compares favourably at the professional end and less so at the branch end. Accountants and auditors earned a median $93,290 in 2025 against $43,060 for tellers.

Entry conditions differ sharply by function. Payroll counts and vacancy counts moved in opposite directions through the summer, which reads as replacement hiring in specialised roles rather than net expansion. Hires fell to a preliminary 104,000 in July from 131,000 in May. Digital-first employers, including the neobanks tracked separately, account for a growing share of new technical roles.

How fast is the financial services industry growing?

Growth rates diverge by segment rather than converging on one industry number. Nonbank assets grew 9.4% in 2024 against 4.7% for banks, per the Financial Stability Board. Insurance runs slower, with total premium growth forecast at 1.3% in real terms for 2026.

US payment volumes sit between those poles. Noncash payment value grew 2.6% a year from 2021 to 2024, against 10.4% over the preceding three-year period. Any single growth figure for the industry conceals a spread of roughly seven percentage points between its fastest and slowest segments. Segment-level reporting beats a headline compound annual growth rate here.

Conclusion

The industry’s centre of gravity has moved outside the banking system that most of its published data describes. Nonbank institutions hold $256.8 trillion, or 51% of global financial assets, and grew at double the banking sector’s rate in 2024. US banks remain highly profitable within that smaller share, earning $90.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026 at a 1.37% return on assets.

Two measurements are worth watching into 2027. The BTOS records firm-level AI adoption of about 30% in the financial sector, and, in line with that, the Federal Reserve’s RPS puts work-related generative AI adoption there at 63%. Reported fraud losses, meanwhile, rose from $4.2 billion in 2020 to $20.877 billion in 2025, a compounding curve that has not yet bent.