Rising Costs, Longer Timelines, Higher Expectations: The New Reality for Financial & Insurance Meetings in 2026 

The financial and insurance sectors are bringing people together again. Senior leadership continues to view meetings and events as strategic investments rather than cost centers, with perception scores holding steady at 73.4 out of 100 according to FICP’s Summer 2025 Pulse Survey. Globally, 85% of meetings professionals are optimistic about 2026, and overall meeting spend is expected to rise. 

But there’s a catch. Actually, several. 

Planners are being squeezed from all sides. Costs are climbing faster than budgets. Lead times are stretching, yet venue availability remains tight. Attendees expect more interactivity, better networking, visible sustainability, and personalized experiences. And stakeholders want proof that every dollar spent delivers a measurable return. 

If you’re planning financial or insurance meetings in 2026, you’re being asked to do more with less while making it look effortless. Here’s what the data reveals about the new reality, and what it means for how you approach your event portfolio. 

In-Person Volume Is Climbing Fast 

The FICP survey shows clear momentum. Over 40% of meetings professionals in financial and insurance industries are planning 26 or more in-person events in 2026. That’s a 10.6% increase from 2025. For hospitality partners serving this sector, that number jumps to nearly 47%, up 10.9%. More telling? The size and scope of these gatherings. 

There’s significant growth in the number of professionals and partners planning 51 or more events in 2026. 10.3% more meetings professionals anticipate this volume in 2026 as compared to 2025. An impressive 26.1% more hospitality partners expect to support this many F&I events. 

Business meetings are driving much of this growth. Nearly 91% of professionals expect the number of business meetings to stay flat or increase, with 42.1% specifically expecting increases. For internal team meetings and product launches, the numbers tell a similar story of expansion and investment. 

The message from leadership is clear: face-to-face connection isn’t negotiable. 

The Event Cost Reality No One Can Ignore 

Here’s where optimism meets reality. According to the FICP survey, hospitality partners expect significant cost increases across nearly every major category, often exceeding 15%. Food and beverage costs top the list, with 90.6% expecting an increase of some kind. Staffing and labor costs follow closely at 84.8%, with almost a third of partners bracing for jumps above 15%. 

Audio visual costs? 78.3% of hospitality partners see increases on the horizon. Two-thirds expect marginal increases of 5-15%, and another 11.7% are bracing for increases of more than 15%. That’s 6.9% more partners anticipating AV cost increases than just a year ago. 

On the meetings professional side, over half expect to spend more on food and beverage (56.6%) and hotel rooms/lodging (56.0%). Audio visual ranks third with 43.4% of professionals expecting increased spending. When you add in travel, venue rental, technology and software, event staffing, and entertainment, you can expect to face increased spending across 8 out of 10 major expense categories. 

Not surprisingly, 38% of planners name cost as their number one challenge for 2026, according to the Amex GBT 2026 Global Meetings & Events Forecast. Economic uncertainty comes in second at 32%. 

Lead Times Are Extending, But Availability Isn’t Getting Easier 

The pendulum is swinging back on planning timelines. More than a quarter of F&I meetings professionals (28.6%) are now planning 12+ months out. That’s nearly double the 15.4% planning that far ahead in 2024. The majority (54.6%) still plan in the 6-12 months out window, but this shift toward longer lead times signals a strategic response to tightening availability. 

This makes sense when you consider what’s competing for the same venues and dates. The 2026 calendar is packed with major events that will impact availability across key markets: the FIFA World Cup spanning the US, Mexico, and Canada, celebrations for America’s 250th birthday, and numerous sporting championships and conferences that anchor entire convention districts for weeks at a time.  

Globally, 28% of meeting professionals cite location availability as a top challenge. In financial services and insurance specifically, that translates to more complex negotiations, less flexibility on preferred dates, and the very real possibility that your go-to venues in your go-to cities may not be available when you need them. 

Longer lead times help. But they don’t solve everything. You still need contract flexibility built in to handle the pivots that have become routine in event planning. Geopolitical uncertainty. Market volatility. Internal reorganizations. Any of these can force changes, and your contracts need room to accommodate them. 

Attendee Expectations Keep Rising 

While costs climb and availability tightens, attendees want more. Not less. More. 

For the second year in a row, improving attendee experience with more memorable events ranks as the top priority for meeting professionals globally. It sits ahead of both cost reduction and sustainability initiatives. One in three professionals put it at the top of their list. 

What do attendees expect that they didn’t five years ago? According to the Amex GBT forecast, 42% want more interactive sessions, such as workshops. 40% want more social activities and networking opportunities. Another 40% expect visible sustainability measures. 37% want more personalized experiences, and 34% prefer meetings closer to where they’re based. 

In the financial and insurance sectors specifically, these expectations layer on top of already high standards for production quality, brand consistency, and security. Your attendees may be investors expecting executive-level polish, clients evaluating whether or not to deepen their relationship with your firm, or employees deciding how engaged they are with your culture. 

The bar isn’t lowering. This creates real tension – how do you elevate the experience when the budget isn’t keeping pace with costs? 

The Strategic Response: Getting Smarter About Technology 

Planners aren’t passive in the face of these pressures. They’re adapting, and technology is a key lever. 

The FICP survey shows that nearly 70% of F&I meetings professionals currently use AI for meetings and events. Another 22.4% are exploring it. Top applications include personalized attendee communications (73.6%) and data analysis (50.9%). 

Looking ahead to 2026, half of meetings professionals globally plan to embrace AI, according to the Amex GBT forecast. 40% will roll out AI-powered event apps that personalize agendas and suggest networking connections, and 34% will use AI to help generate creative concepts. The appeal is clear: these tools help control costs while still delivering the personalized experiences attendees now expect. 

Beyond AI, planners are investing strategically in technology that creates impact. 35% of F&I meeting professionals plan to use sophisticated AV technology, such as LED video walls and AI camera tracking. 31% will incorporate live polling and feedback tools, and 29% plan to use onsite check-in tools. 

The goal isn’t technology for its own sake. It’s using technology to deliver what audiences want without proportionally increasing costs. Interactivity. Personalization. Seamless logistics. 

Where Traditional Cost-Cutting Falls Short 

When budgets get tight, the playbook looks familiar. Move to secondary cities. Shift to off-peak days. Reduce F&B spend. Trim giveaways and corporate gifts. Look to sponsorships, cut staff, or reduce attendee counts. 

The Amex GBT forecast confirms these tactics are still active. 35% of meetings professionals are seeking supplementary funding through sponsorship or other sources. 30% are changing venues. 28% are reducing food and beverage spend. 27% are bringing fewer staff to meetings. The same percentage are cutting giveaways and gifts. 

These approaches can help, but they have limits. Secondary cities may save on hotel rates, but add to travel costs and reduce the appeal that attracts attendance. Off-peak days mean lower venue costs but potentially lower attendance if your audience won’t travel on Mondays or Fridays. Cutting F&B affects one of the top drivers of networking and experience. 

The smarter play? Focus on scalability and consistency across your event portfolio rather than reinventing the wheel for every program. 

The Case for Standardized, Scalable Event Technology 

Here’s where financial and insurance organizations have a structural advantage if they use it correctly. 

You’re not planning one event. You’re planning dozens, or hundreds. Board meetings. Investor conferences. Client forums. Training programs. Regional gatherings. Trade show activations. Incentive trips. 

When you’re running dozens of events rather than a single flagship program, the challenge changes. You need consistency, not constant reinvention. That’s where scalable event technology matters.  

Organizations are moving away from a custom production for every meeting. Instead, they’re creating standardized digital setups that can scale up or down depending on the audience, venue, and budget. This allows for consistent brand messaging, centralized control, and higher quality, while execution happens locally. Think of it as creating a repeatable system, rather than starting from zero each time.  

This matters especially for organizations with branch or regional structures. You need local execution with national consistency, which requires a provider with both reach and repeatability.  

What This Means for Your 2026 Planning 

The data paints a clear picture. Volume is up. Costs are rising even faster. Lead times are extending. Expectations are growing. And you’re expected to navigate all of it while proving ROI to stakeholders who are watching every dollar. Success in this environment requires rethinking some fundamental assumptions. 

• Technology is an investment in outcomes. The organizations seeing the best results are finding creative ways to stretch their technology budgets. They’re using hybrid capabilities to extend their reach, capturing data that actually proves value, and building interactive experiences that justify what they’re spending. With AV ranking as the third-highest spending priority for F&I meetings professionals (45.5%), right behind hotel rooms and F&B, the question isn’t whether to invest, it’s how to invest strategically. 
• Consistency matters more than customization at scale.  When you’re running 26 or more events a year, building each one from the ground up gets expensive, fast, and risky. Standardized solutions that account for different venues and audience sizes deliver predictable costs and reliable quality. Your brand stays strong. Execution gets tighter. Your team stops drowning in logistics and has actual time for strategy.
• One partner beats multiple vendors. Multiple vendors mean inconsistent quality, duplicated overhead, and bloated budgets. In a regulatory environment that demands risk mitigation, working with a single partner who understands your compliance requirements eliminates significant friction. You get better pricing through consolidated spend, better execution through institutional knowledge, and better risk management through established protocols. A partner who maintains consistent crews and has master service agreements already in place removes variables from an already complex equation. 
• Plan for pivots, not perfection. 55% of hospitality partners report that geopolitical factors have affected their ability to support F&I events. 13.3% of planners have experienced direct impacts. The ability to adapt isn’t optional, and so neither is contract language that protects you. 60% of F&I planners have already updated their standard contracts. This also spells a need for technology solutions that can pivot quickly. Backup streaming. Flexible AV configurations. Communication systems that work whether you’re in-person, hybrid, or forced to go virtual. 
• Regional coverage with national reach is non-negotiable. If you have branches, offices, or events across multiple markets, you need a provider who can deliver consistent quality whether you’re in New York, Dallas, Phoenix, or Toronto. Local crew knowledge matters. Venue familiarity matters. The ability to support you coast to coast without sacrificing brand standards or adding coordination overhead matters. 

The Bottom Line

You can’t plan 2026 events the way you planned in 2019. Costs have shifted, attendee expectations have evolved, and competition for people’s time and attention has intensified. This calls for building systems that scale. Working with partners who have both deep expertise and national reach. Leveraging data and AI to demonstrate ROI and create personalized experiences. Booking further in advance while still building in enough flexibility to pivot when conditions change. 

Rising costs, longer timelines, and higher expectations aren’t temporary challenges. They’re the new baseline. The question is whether your approach is built for this reality, or still fighting it.