• Corporate and investment bank operating costs climbed almost 25% since 2019
  • That increase was fueled in large part by a 41.2% increase in technology spending
  • Spending increases from 2024 to 2025 show that cost pressures are outweighing efficiency gains from AI and other source

August 25, 2026 — Corporate and investment bank operating costs have climbed almost 25% since 2019, driven largely by rapidly increasing technology spending, according to a new analysis from Crisil Coalition Greenwich.

Bank spending on technology increased 41.2% from 2019 to 2025. That surge in tech-related spending has contributed to a steady increase in operating expenses for the 12 global corporate and investment banks that make up the Coalition Greenwich CIB Index. The trend continued last year, with technology spend increasing 9.9% and overall operating costs climbing 7.7%.

“The rise in operating costs from 2024 to 2025 shows that investment requirements and other cost pressures continue to outweigh any efficiencies being realized from newer and potentially transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence,” says Stephen Bruel, Research Director in Market Structure & Technology at Crisil Coalition Greenwich.

Technology costs have grown fastest for U.S. banks. From 2019 to 2025, tech spending increased 48% in the United States and 30% in Europe. However, data from Crisil Coalition Greenwich on “technology intensity” at EU banks suggest that they are narrowing the gap with their U.S. counterparts.

Globally, this long-term increase in tech spending has pushed technology costs to 22% of overall spending among the banks.

“Changing the Bank” will require even more tech spending

To remain competitive, banks must strike a balance between “running the bank” and “changing the bank.” Currently, senior decision-makers taking part in the Crisil Coalition Greenwich research believe that, in terms of cost allocations, the balance between those two priorities is weighted too much toward running the bank. Tilting budgets back toward equilibrium will likely require even more spending on technology.

“Changing the bank requires modernizing infrastructure through cloud adoption and transforming products and client experience with GenAI and AI agents, such as coding assistants,” says Sebastian Lepadden, Research Director, Cost and Capital Analytics at Crisil Coalition Greenwich. “Given those needs, we expect banks in both the United States and the EU to continue allocating growing shares of their overall budgets to technology.”

The Coalition Greenwich CIB Index

The Coalition Greenwich CIB Index comprises BofA, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, UBS, and Wells Fargo. A complete analysis of bank operating costs based on CIB Index data is presented in a new report entitled, Investment bank spending: A careful balance of run, grow and innovate.