Today’s CFOs are being pulled in every direction as their roles continue to expand. Traditional duties such as cost management remain part of their remit, and finance chiefs are increasingly influencing company strategy.
Many CFOs are pushing forward with help from technology solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) that can assist with traditional and evolving demands.
“It’s empowered our team to focus on more value-added work, more forward-looking work,” David Chojnowski, Walmart’s corporate controller and chief accounting officer, said in a new Deloitte report. Chojnowski added that his team’s journey to automate portions of day-to-day work has freed the team to provide business partners “with financial and accounting insights to help them make optimal business decisions.”
Chojnowski was among nine finance executives from global companies interviewed in Finance Trends 2026: Navigating the expanded scope of finance. The report features a survey of 1,326 CFOs or next-in-line-to-be CFOs at companies in 23 countries with annual revenue of US$1 billion or more.
More than half of respondents (57%) said they are among the top leaders influencing strategy development for their companies, outpacing the 36% who are primarily responsible for cost and expense management. Regardless of their overall focus, CFOs today clearly are juggling plenty of responsibilities. The top six answers for CFOs’ top three priorities in fiscal year 2026 fell between 48% and 40%, a lack of consensus that led the report’s authors to suggest: “When it comes to which priorities should receive the lion’s share of respondents’ attention, it may be a case of ‘everything, everywhere, all at once.’”
Whether the CFOs stood among their companies’ top leaders influencing strategy development or cost management (or both), many reported using technology — particularly AI — to help their causes.
Among those in a leading strategy role, nearly half have deployed cloud solutions to optimise cost (48%); have fully integrated AI agents into specific areas of the finance function (48%); and have used AI and automation to address productivity gaps (43%).
Among those responsible for cost management, about half have used cloud-based solutions to optimise costs (51%); have used AI to identify cost reduction opportunities (49%); and have used AI to automate processes and reduce costs (43%).
While AI is becoming a common tool for CFOs, it comes with its share of challenges, including a financially focused one.
Among leaders who have at least experimented with AI use cases, 63% have fully deployed or actively used AI within the finance function. Just 21% of those said they already see those investments delivering clear, measurable value.
That challenge, however, doesn’t seem to be slowing them down. “Unclear ROI” was the least popular response among five choices to a question about top AI challenges. The most popular response? Data security concerns.
“Several of our interviewees stressed that data privacy is particularly relevant in finance,” the report’s authors wrote. “Ensuring that AI tools are secure and compliant will be critical as finance teams expand their AI capabilities across sensitive workflows and decision-making processes.”
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com.