Nearly 8 in 10 (79%) Latin American business leaders say they’re confident in their ability to grow revenues in 2025. But that optimism has dropped sharply from 2024, when 92% felt confident about achieving growth.
Recent surveys offer a revealing look into the shifting priorities and challenges facing the region’s leadership. Among the most critical focus areas:
- Investment strategies for the next 12 months
- AI adoption plans and expectations
- Concrete actions to drive growth
- Steps to improve workforce performance
- Efforts to build a stronger culture of innovation
Drawing on recent research from EY, HLB, and PwC, here’s a look at what’s keeping Latin America’s business leaders up at night, what they’re prioritizing—and how they plan to move forward.
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1# Ramping up Reinvention
PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey revealed that CEOs around the globe are highly concerned with reinventing their companies. In fact, 41% of CEOs in Latin America (42% globally) feel that their companies will no longer be viable within the next 10 years if they stay on their current course.
Globally, two-thirds of CEOs (64%) report that they have implemented at least one action to change the ways their companies generate value, ostensibly to help correct their companies’ courses.
When asked about more specific actions they have taken, the most common action taken by Latin American CEOs is to develop innovative products or services:
This action by LatAm CEOs aligns with CEOs globally, with 38% of them also reporting that they developed innovative products or services over the past 5 years.
However, these efforts have not yet borne much fruit: according to PwC, at a global level, CEOs indicated that only 7% of their revenues during the past 5 years came from new business lines developed in that time frame.
#2 A Focus on Efficiency and Driving Down Costs
In HLB’s 2025 survey of LatAm business leaders, 71% of executives identified improving operational efficiency as their top growth driver for the year ahead. This is followed by cost reduction (55%) and adopting new technologies (55%). The emphasis is clear: leaders are looking for ways to extract more value from existing resources while still laying the groundwork for future competitiveness.
While the EY survey Desafíos y tendencias de las empresas en Latinoamérica doesn’t pose the same questions, there’s some interesting alignment with the results from the HLB survey question above. The EY study — which gathered the responses of 1,720 LatAm leaders in 18 countries — asked about the top internal challenges facing their companies. The responses:
A number of these challenges—operational efficiency, technology transformation, strategy, innovation — align with the actions that CEOs from the HLB survey plan to take in the next 12 months.
#3 LatAm Leaders Bullish on AI Adoption
AI in Latin America has moved past the “let’s see what happens” stage. For many companies, it’s now an active part of operations—particularly generative AI (GenAI).
According to PwC’s 2025 CEO Survey, 60% of Latin American CEOs say GenAI has already improved employee time efficiency. Even more impressive, 39% report increased revenue and profitability from GenAI initiatives—figures that outpace the global averages. Looking forward, 54% of CEOs expect GenAI to further boost profitability in 2025—compared to 49% of CEOs around the globe that expect the same of this technology.
When asked to predict where AI will be systematically integrated into different areas of their companies over the next 3 years, this is how the CEOs surveyed by PwC responded:
But when we look at current usage of AI, HLB’s 2025 study shows that companies are zeroing in on practical applications. The most common current uses include:
The use of AI for content generation and in marketing and content generation jibes with other studies showing marketers around the world making greater use of AI in these areas. It’s surprising to see only 19% use AI for customer analytics, considering that analysis of massive data sets is a key strength of AI. Yet the other telling data point is that 27% of leaders selected “none of the above” in response to the question, which suggests either a significant lag in AI adoption among Latin American businesses or some other uses not captured in the HLB study.
#4 Building a Workforce That Can Keep Up
HLB finds that 54% of executives plan to invest in training and development in 2025, and many organizations are already running workforce audits and skills reviews. PwC shows leaders seeing productivity gains from GenAI but warns that only a minority are systematically integrating AI into workforce development — a gap that could blunt the long-term benefits. EY highlights workforce productivity, automation, and process improvements as top internal priorities.
Despite this strong interest in workforce development among LatAm business leaders, it does not appear to translate into greater hiring:
Only 4% of CEOS expect to significantly increase hiring vs. 54% that expect to main current levels and 12% that expect to decrease levels.
In fact, the areas in which Latin American CEOs expect to increase or significantly increase investment over the next 12 months are:
#5 Encouraging Innovation—to a Point
Innovation is back on the agenda — but many leaders admit they’re inconsistent at turning ideas into repeatable results.
For example, HLB reports only 17% of companies consider themselves successful innovators, with 48% saying they will actively encourage a culture of innovation this year.
Despite the intention to encourage innovation, only 30% plan to set aside the budget and resources—and only 12% plan to set up an innovation lab.
However, regardless of financial commitment, the EY data suggests that innovation is a priority for LatAm business leaders, coming in second after AI:
The Untapped Power of Consumer Insights in Latin America
How B2B firms in Latin America use consumer insights and market research to leverage their strategy
Next Steps
While these surveys shed interesting light on the thinking of Latin America’s leaders, your company’s decisions for 2026 require a deeper live.
This is why we’re offering customized 2026 Forecast Presentations for Latin America.
By reaching out to us, companies can arrange for AMI’s Managing Director, John Price, to create and offer a forecast presentation for your leadership team—either live or via a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Teams.
The forecast will cover not only the macroeconomic environment but also what YOUR specific company can expect in YOUR industry in YOUR key markets that you operate in. This insight-packed presentation will help you understand the opportunities and challenges ahead as 2026 unfolds, whether it’s tariffs, industry trends, market disruptors, the impact of elections and much more.
