{"id":90226,"date":"2026-06-30T03:47:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T03:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/90226\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T03:47:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T03:47:27","slug":"ai-spending-in-asset-management-tops-100m-as-agent-adoption-stalls-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/90226\/","title":{"rendered":"AI spending in asset management tops $100m as agent adoption stalls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                Survey reveals widening gap between investment ambition and workforce readiness across the sector\n            <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Asset managers and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentnews.com\/glossary\/private-equity\/264875\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">private equity<\/a> firms are projecting average AI spending of $103 million over the next 12 months, even as the industry grapples with slowing adoption of AI agents and deepening concerns about cost control, according to KPMG&#8217;s Q2 2026 AI Quarterly Pulse Survey.<\/p>\n<p>The survey, which polled 100 US-based C-suite and senior executives from firms with annual revenues of $1 billion or more, found cybersecurity the dominant near-term spending category at 35%, followed by data and analytics at 29% and research and development at 27%.<\/p>\n<p>Commitment to the technology appears durable. Just over half of respondents said AI would remain a top investment priority even in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentnews.com\/glossary\/recession\/263434\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recession<\/a> scenario over the next 12 months, a finding that signals the sector views AI less as discretionary spending and more as structural infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Data security and privacy concerns topped the list of factors shaping near-term strategy, cited by 91% of respondents. Pressure from investors or boards to demonstrate value came second at 87%, followed by access to lower-cost large language models at 84%, workforce limitations at 82%, and the need to improve client experience and engagement at 81%.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the scale of investment, actual deployment of AI agents remains limited. Only 19% of firms are currently scaling or orchestrating agents across multiple functions, while more than half are still in the piloting phase. Employee adoption fell sharply quarter over quarter, dropping to 22% from 37%, and more than a third of firms reported outright resistance from staff.<\/p>\n<p>Skills and capability gaps drove that resistance in 67% of cases, followed by job security concerns and increased workload complexity, each cited by 60%. Trust and transparency issues accounted for 43%. Against that backdrop, 83% of organizations said they are either already investing in reskilling programs or plan to do so. More than half said they would pay between 6% and 15% more for candidates who can demonstrate strong AI capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The barriers to scaling agents are predominantly structural. Data readiness and access was flagged by 57% of respondents as a primary obstacle, while AI cost and economic literacy and the complexity of agentic systems were each cited by 49%.<\/p>\n<p>Governance and cost visibility present an additional challenge. While 63% of respondents said AI operating costs are at least partially visible, only 4% reported full visibility. Monitoring dashboards are in place at 61% of firms, and 58% incorporate cost review into AI approval processes, but usage or token budgets have been adopted by just 18%.<\/p>\n<p>Accountability for AI-driven decisions sits heavily at the top of the organizational chart. Nearly six in ten respondents attributed primary responsibility to the CEO or executive committee, while 25% named another C-suite executive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Survey reveals widening gap between investment ambition and workforce readiness across the sector Asset managers and private equity&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24,405,7537,4471,5807],"class_list":["post-90226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-asset-managers","tag-kpmg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}