Asset Managers Are Betting Big on AI in Risk Management, Clearwater Analytics Research Reveals

BOISE, Idaho, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, LONDON and HONG KONG, September 2, 2026 – New research from Clearwater Analytics, drawn from its “GenAI and the Data Divide” study, finds asset managers are extending AI agent into risk management, with almost three quarters (73%) expecting the pace of AI integration into risk management to accelerate in the next three years. That’s a lower number than the near-unanimous confidence firms show in AI generally, and that gap is the story. Even in the one function where caution runs highest, most firms still expect AI’s role to keep growing.

“Nearly every firm surveyed (93%) already treats AI agent integration as important or critical to their operations, and 95% say it’s important to meeting their investment management goals over the next three years,” said Souvik Das, CTO at Clearwater Analytics. “Risk management is where you’d expect that consensus to be hardest to find. That so many firms still expect AI’s role there to grow reveals intentional direction by firms who’ve actually tested it and trust what they’re seeing.”

The investment backs up the conviction. More than four in five managers expect AI spending to increase by at least 50% over the next 12 months, with 62% anticipating rises of between 50% and 99%, and a further 22% expecting increases of between 100% and 299%. Just under 5% expect spending to stay flat or decrease.

For an industry that allocates capital with precision, firms have decided AI is core infrastructure for risk management. But the investment is running ahead of the foundation it depends on, and that gap is exactly what separates the firms getting this right from the ones still catching up. 

Taken together, these findings describe an industry moving AI into the center of its competitive proposition, building the function that plays a defining role in whether they can be trusted with a client’s capital.

“One would expect the most cautious part of the business to move the slowest on something new. This data says the opposite. Firms are leaning into AI in one place they can least afford to get wrong,” continued Das. “Risk management is where a firm’s data has nowhere to hide. A slow report is forgivable. A risk signal built on bad data isn’t. Seventy-nine percent of firms call their data complete, but only 56% call it accurate, and that gap is what decides whether a risk signal can be trusted. The firms closing it are the ones making sharper decisions, with better information than they’ve had before.” 

Clearwater Analytics is the natively agentic investment management platform built on a single, continuously reconciled investment record. Portfolio management, trading, accounting, risk, compliance, and private markets workflows run on a single source of truth, creating a connected foundation for automation, AI-driven insights, and agentic workflows across the investment process. Clearwater supports more than $10 trillion in assets globally for insurers, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, corporations, and governments. Learn more at www.cwan.com.

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Clearwater Analytics commissioned independent research agency Pureprofile to interview 178 senior executives working for asset management firms including insurance asset managers, hedge funds, private credit managers and general asset managers based in Europe, the US and Asia. The research was conducted in March 2026.

Phil Anderson, Perception A | +44 7767 491 519 | phil@perceptiona.com

Claudia Cahill, Head of Communications and PR | +1 208-433-1200 | press@clearwateranalytics.com