If you hold a role in finance today, it’s hard to go 24 hours without hearing something about artificial intelligence. Maybe you’re learning how it’s going to make you redundant or why it’s causing an investment boom. Maybe you’ve encountered my personal favourite, and I’m being facetious, which is hearing a speaker at a conference open their session by quoting ChatGPT (please stop). Regardless, whether you’re a CFO, Chair, NED, or part of a finance department, you’ll need to be following this trend. Your peers certainly are. 79% of respondents to Bain Capital’s recent CFO Advisory Board survey reported that they would be increasing their spend on AI this year, and 94% reported that Generative AI could strongly benefit at least one relevant CFO activity area within the year.
But where to start? In my experience, it’s easy to talk in broad brushstrokes about AI, but the real value comes in picking out specific issues. Thankfully, the team at Talent4 has given me five more blogs to dive into this, and so I’ll be covering the following:
- The evolution of the CFOs role in the age of AI
- How finance leaders are actually using AI
- How finance teams are choosing AI tools
- Why AI has changed reporting, including the way that reports are scrutinised.
- How to prepare your CV for the AI finance revolution
There’s a reason Talent4 has asked me to lift the lid on these topics. Talent4’s mission is to connect scaling businesses with the right talent – typically CFOs, Non-Executive Directors, Chairs and Finance Directors – so that’s where my focus will be. I’ll look at professional development and the jobs market, as well as the AI decisions and strategies that are transforming finance teams. My aim is to offer some actionable insights, and maybe even help you to hire effectively or make the next step in your career.
This is one trend you need to stay on top of
I’ll also lean into my recent experiences in the fintech market. As the former Head of Content at Money20/20 Europe, I curated the agenda for this year’s biggest independent banking, payments and fintech show, which welcomed nearly 10,000 senior finance leaders at The Rai in Amsterdam. Few will be surprised to learn that AI (along with stablecoins) stole the show this year, which is perhaps ironic as the third hottest topic was fraud.
This year’s show featured a panel debate on the specific topic of how CFOs will use AI. Not only does this evidence that I’m not merely feigning an interest, it also gives me a few assumptions to test. Our panellists in Amsterdam agreed that AI is being used to automate low-value work, freeing up CFOs to focus on strategy and creative analysis. They also agreed that AI is becoming more embedded in existing finance tools, and being used to automate things like invoice processing and compliance reports. We’ll explore these themes in more depth.
Clearly, we’re entering a phase where finance departments can produce far more output and move at ever greater speeds but this brings its own challenges, not to mention the fact that finance teams aren’t the only ones using AI. Of course, the situation for CFOs and AI will continue to evolve, and change tends to be relentless when AI is involved. Whether you’re hiring, seeking a new role, or simply interested in professional development, this is one trend you need to stay on top of.
