Where the Hours Go in Financial Services Back Offices: What the Research Says

Insurance agencies, accounting firms, investment advisers and community banks have different regulators and clients, but ask staff at any of them where the week goes and a similar answer comes back: a large share disappears into administrative work unrelated to the client. Studies published between 2023 and 2026 put numbers behind that complaint, and behind how much artificial intelligence has changed it. Here is what the research shows, sector by sector.

Insurance agencies

A Vertafore workforce survey, the vendor's own read on nearly 2,000 agency staff, found career sentiment sliding: the share who would recommend an insurance career fell from 85% in 2021 to 65% in 2024, and 27% expect to leave the industry within five years. Fifty-two percent of those involved in hiring cite underqualified candidates as a top challenge, up from 46% in 2022. On the financial side, the Big "I" (Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America) and Reagan Consulting's Best Practices Study found 10.7% organic growth and revenue per employee of $228,321 for 2025, though agencies must be nominated and then ranked on financials, so the sample skews toward better-run agencies. a separate Vertafore 2026 outlook survey found agency staff split on artificial intelligence: 23% confident it will transform daily work, 39% curious, and 29% cautious. That reflects sentiment about where the industry may be headed. It does not measure how agencies use artificial intelligence today.

Accounting firms

Thomson Reuters Institute, which sells tax and accounting software, runs an annual survey of tax and accounting firms: 639 respondents in 2025, about half from the United States and the rest abroad, found 45% called recruiting highly challenging, up from 39% the year before, and 28% reassigned tax and accounting work to staff without accounting qualifications in the past year (Thomson Reuters Institute, 2025). The 2026 edition, 600 respondents, found automation inching forward: 44% of firms automate up to a quarter of their tax workflow, and just 11% automate none of it, down from 18% a year earlier. Separately, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' own biennial issues survey found that for firms of 11 to 30 employees, "hiring experienced staff" was the top-ranked concern in 2026, ahead of every other issue.

Investment advisers and wealth management firms

The clearest time-allocation data here comes from Kitces Research's 2022 survey (published 2023) of financial planning teams: senior advisers spend only 30% of their time in front-office, client-facing work, and just 17% in actual client meetings. A separate study by Fidelity Institutional, which sells advisers practice-management services, found a similar pattern across a broader mix of channels: only 41% of an adviser's day is client or prospect facing, with 59% going to administration and compliance. On artificial intelligence, a 2026 study by Charles Schwab, which sells RIAs (Registered Investment Advisers) custody services, found 63% now use it in some capacity, more than double the prior reading, though only about 1 in 10 have fully integrated it into the business.

Community banks

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors' 2025 survey of 268 community banks found bankers attributing more than a third of accounting and auditing costs, and roughly a quarter of consulting costs, to regulatory compliance. Forty-one percent named technology cost as their top adoption barrier, and a separate 41% cited difficulty keeping qualified technology staff. Bank Director's 2025 survey, sponsored by core banking vendor Jack Henry & Associates, found 62% of banks had experimented with generative artificial intelligence in limited cases; the same survey's 2026 edition found adoption past experimentation: 72% now implemented in operations, marketing, or compliance. Cornerstone Advisors' 2026 survey, covering a broader size mix, put deployment lower, at 49% of banks and 59% of credit unions, a reminder that figures vary by sample and by question wording.

What the research agrees on

Four things hold across every sector. A large share of time, often close to half or more, goes to administrative and compliance work; the service the client pays for gets what's left. Hiring and retaining qualified people is at least as pressing a concern as any technology question. Artificial intelligence adoption today is early and partial everywhere: pilots, experimentation and cautious optimism, short of full integration. And the studies most likely to report high adoption rates tend to come from vendors selling the software in question, so weigh an adoption number against independent sources before treating it as settled.

What it doesn't tell a smaller firm

None of these studies isolate firms by employee headcount in a way that maps cleanly onto a smaller firm. They use revenue bands, assets under management, or total bank assets instead, none of which line up with each other. Almost every figure is a self-reported estimate; few come from an actual measured time study. "Using AI" covers everything from one employee trying a chatbot to a governed, firm-wide rollout. No published study identifies which back-office tasks (renewal processing, tax data entry, reconciliation) stop being manual once a tool is adopted, or measures hours actually reclaimed.

KRC Consulting is starting an interview study of financial services operations leaders at independent firms on where back-office hours actually go, task by task, the gap left above. Operations leaders willing to give 30 minutes can email hello@krc.consulting, subject line "Back-office research"; participants get the anonymized findings first.