McKinsey Global Banking Annual Review 2026: global banking earned USD 1.3 trillion in 2025 (a record), but its profitability rests on customers over 55 who move slowly. That "grace period" is over: generative AI hit 45% adoption in two years (digital banking took 15), with no generational gap. Three forces are eroding customer primacy: mature fintechs (17% of comparable revenue, 37% of market cap), agentic AI reassigning spreads, and trust shifting to fintechs (+24 pp). The answer: dynamic, hyperpersonalized engagement —what Delto's Engage module delivers.
McKinsey has just released its Global Banking Annual Review 2026 , and at first glance the numbers look unbeatable: global banking earned USD 1.3 trillion in 2025 , up 7% year over year. It is the highest net income of any industry in the world. But behind the record are signals no bank should ignore. Are customers leaving without banks noticing? The industry is still profitable because its best customers —those aged 55 and up— still move slowly. They generate the most revenue and are the slowest to switch banks. That gave traditional banking what McKinsey calls a "technological grace period" : as the world adopted the internet, the smartphone and apps, banks could keep pace with their most valuable customers. There was no urgency. That period is over. In just two years, generative AI reached 45% adoption among working adults in the United States. Digital banking took 15 years to reach the same number. And most critically: the generational gap in AI adoption is minimal —people over 55 use ChatGPT almost as much as millennials—. When a tool is adopted equally by your youngest customers and your most profitable ones —to resolve doubts, solve problems and do it conversationally— there is no longer a window to adapt gradually. There is urgency not to fall behind. Which three forces are reshaping customer primacy? The report identifies three phenomena that, together, mark a real inflection point: Mature fintechs are no longer an experiment. The 1,000 largest fintechs went from capturing 10% of comparable revenue in 2021 to 17% in 2025 . Their market capitalization already represents 37% of that of banks —far above their revenue share: the markets are betting on them. Agentic AI reassigns spreads. AI agents already monitor balances in real time, compare rates across institutions, move money to higher-yield accounts and return in time to pay bills. Everything customers didn't do because it was hard, an AI now does on their behalf. The spreads that used to stay with the bank now go to the account holder. Trust changed hands. In a McKinsey survey across seven European countries, fintechs beat traditional banks in customer satisfaction by 24 percentage points . And, for the first time, they also beat them on trust —the asset that was banks' main advantage for centuries—. How should banks respond? McKinsey proposes something that sounds contradictory for an industry used to caution: banks must become "multi-speed" organizations. They can't run every process at the same pace. They need to move the core carefully and under control while, at the same time, running at startup speed in the areas where competitors already are. At the center of it all is something we've worked on at Delto for years: hyperpersonalization of the customer relationship. The banks doing best are building high-speed commercial engines that run continuous micro-campaigns, test propositions in real time and scale what works. Not static segmentation, but dynamic, proactive, personalized engagement. What is Engage and how does it close this gap? When McKinsey talks about "dynamic, real-time, hyperpersonalized engagement" as banks' new imperative, it describes exactly the problem Engage solves —the Delto Suite module for proactive campaigns and conversational engagement. Instead of waiting for the customer to call, write or churn, the bank speaks first: with the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Some concrete banking use cases: Personalized payment reminders. Not a generic SMS, but a conversational WhatsApp flow that understands the customer's history, the amount owed and their preferred channel, and can offer refinancing options in the same conversation. Re-engagement of inactive customers. Audiences activated by behavior: if a customer stops using the app, the bot starts a conversation with a relevant incentive before they migrate to a neobank. Proactive onboarding. The bank guides the new customer through their first steps —first transactions, alert setup, product activation— with conditional logic based on their profile, without waiting to be asked. Data-driven cross-sell and up-sell. No one-size-fits-all message: audiences by attributes, behavior and history, with content personalized at the individual level. What the report flags as traditional banks' great gap —being unable to move fast, test propositions and scale what works— is exactly what Engage is designed to solve. How much time do banks have left? One of the report's strongest conclusions is that banking no longer has the luxury of time. When the internet arrived, banks took ten years to adapt and survived because their most valuable customers —those over 55— also took their time. With AI that isn't happening: adoption is too fast and too cross-cutting, spanning every age group at once. Banks waiting to "see how it evolves" are already losing ground. Neobanks don't wait: Revolut went from 3 niche services in 2015 to more than 50 products today; Nubank started with credit cards in 2014 and is now the most valuable bank in the region. The window for traditional banks to build their own proactive engagement engine exists, but it's closing. At Delto we work with banks across Latin America that already get it. If you want to see how Engage can help you build that conversational engine, let's talk .
What does the McKinsey Global Banking Annual Review 2026 say? That global banking earned USD 1.3 trillion in 2025 (a record), but the most profitable banks are losing customer preference to fintechs and neobanks, driven by rapid AI adoption.
Why does AI accelerate the risk for traditional banks? Because generative AI reached 45% adoption in two years (digital banking took 15) with no generational gap: the most profitable customers adopt it as fast as young ones, ending the "grace period" banks used to have.
How can banks respond? By becoming "multi-speed" organizations and building dynamic, hyperpersonalized engagement engines. Delto's Engage module enables proactive, conversational WhatsApp campaigns to retain and reactivate customers.
What is Delto's Engage? It's the Delto Suite module for proactive conversational engagement: payment reminders, re-engagement of inactive customers, proactive onboarding and personalized cross/up-sell over WhatsApp.