US Finance and Insurance Sector NAICS 52

May 16, 2025 - Investors More Bullish on Stock Market

• Most American investors have a gloomy outlook on the US stock market, with low expectations for the next three months, according to a survey by Charles Schwab. The investment bank’s quarterly report on trader/client sentiment shows 57% have a bearish outlook in Q2, up from 32% in Q1, due to market volatility and a rocky political environment. Investors won’t remain idle, though, and plan to navigate an up and down market. About 61% of investors plan to buy stocks when things dip and almost half of respondents are adding money to their portfolios and plan to invest in individual stocks. The risk of a recession jumped 30 points to 63% and investors expect high inflation throughout the year. Investors feel most bullish about the energy and utilities industries (cited by about half of those surveyed) and are more bearish on real estate holdings and discretionary consumer spending.
• While AI integration remains a top priority for the commercial banking industry, the more immediate need is investing in cybersecurity systems to combat fraud, according to the KPMG 2025 Banking Technology Survey. About 89% of surveyed bank executives cited fraud protection and security as their top investment strategies this year, while GenAI enablement fell in importance. Roughly 75% of surveyed bankers noted an increase in cyber attacks in the last year. However, when asked about priorities over a longer three year period, the numbers essentially reversed with 67% citing AI integration as most important. The main operational areas targeted for increased use of AI in the industry included online and mobile banking, and chatbots and virtual assistants to handle more customer service tasks. Key drivers cited by respondents for technological modernization in banking were regulatory compliance (83%) and operational efficiency (80%).

• People in the US lost $16.6 billion to financial scammers in 2024, a surge of 33% over the previous year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Seniors were particularly vulnerable to bad actors, accounting for 28% of those losses - or $4.8 billion. People aged 50-59 were the second most affected group with scam losses of $2.5 billion. The FBI report also noted the most prevalent scams include fraudulent investments (people lost $50 billion to these over the last 10 years); business emails pretending to be a supervisor or co-worker asking for money and tech support scams; and emergency scams where someone pretends to be a relative in financial trouble. The states with the most scam losses are Texas, California, and Florida. The FBI gets about 830,000 cyber fraud reports each year and the average person loses $20,000 to those tactics.
• Net income for the banking industry rose to $286.2 billion for the year 2024, a 5.6% increase from the prior period, but still well below pre-pandemic levels, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). One-time events during the year resulted in lower expenses, higher noninterest income, and smaller losses on securities. Community banks, though, saw a 2.4% net income dip for the year to $29.5 billion - largely due to higher noninterest expenses (up 6.1%) and higher provision expenses (up 20%). Those expenses, among other losses, took a bite out of community banking’s $2.2 billion in net interest income and $1.1 billion in noninterest income.