Accountants’ confidence in the global economy remains weak entering 2026.
Processing Content
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Institute of Management Accountants released the latest edition of their quarterly Global Economic Conditions Survey, which polled almost 1,200 accountants and other finance professionals. It found that confidence remains at a low level, albeit notably higher than the same period in 2025. While the global economy performed better than expected last year and is expected to remain resilient this year, a number of uncertainties remain.
Accountants flagged economic pressures like inflation, recession and interest rates as the top risk priority in 2025, followed by cyber threats, geopolitical uncertainty and regulatory instability. The report highlighted the interdependence of these risks, saying they “interact, reinforce each other, and evolve faster than traditional planning and control frameworks were designed to handle.”
Courtesy of ACCA
“Accountants remain cautious entering 2026, amid a highly uncertain global backdrop,” Jonathan Ashworth, chief economist at the ACCA, said in a statement. “The global economy performed better than expected in 2025 and looks set to remain resilient in 2026 amid recent monetary easing by central banks, stock market gains, supportive fiscal policies in key countries, and the ongoing global AI boom. But there remains significant uncertainty, amid a wide array of risks, not least on the geopolitical front, which are more heavily skewed to the downside.”
Regionally, accountants in North America were particularly downbeat, especially in comparison to Asia Pacific-based accountants, whose confidence rose in the fourth quarter in response to global growth, reduced uncertainty in global trade and the global AI boom. Confidence was largely unchanged in Western Europe and remains extremely low in the U.K.
