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Artificial intelligence (AI) is already a top priority for finance teams, with many organizations moving beyond pilot programs to full-scale implementation, according to research revealed by Zip.
Key takeaways
- Automated finance workflows are already here, with over 90% of financial execs seeing the perks of new AI tools and tech.
- Finance executives anticipate that financial planning and analysis (FP&A) will likely be the most impacted function by AI in the next couple of years.
- 62.9% of finance employees set aside more than two hours a week to focus on AI reskilling.
- AI agents are proving to be the hottest new tools in finance—95.3% of the finance organizations surveyed are already exploring implementation opportunities.
- Contrary to popular belief, only 15.7% of finance departments are expecting drastic layoffs as agentic AI comes into play.
- Data security and privacy are the top concerns for implementing agentic AI in finance as regulations and compliance standards continue to evolve.
- Over 39% of organizations report faster processing times as their primary AI benefit.
- Roughly 33.8% have experienced reduced manual effort through AI automation, improving efficiency.
- AI-powered approvals are streamlining workflows for over 33% of teams.
- Nearly 32% have improved compliance while simultaneously increasing accuracy and reducing errors.
- Over 26% say AI tools have helped them with enhanced decision-making.
- Almost 25% of finance teams have seen accelerated book closing.
- About 23% reported that greater spend visibility is one of the biggest benefits.
- Some of the other use cases where finance teams are seeing the biggest impact include invoice processing and accounts payable (31.9%); risk assessment and management (31.4%); expense reporting processing (30.5%); compliance monitoring and reporting (29.5%); early-stage purchasing (28.1%); and audit trail analysis (22.9%).
- Over 50% of Fintechs increased hiring despite the rise of AI applications in finance, suggesting that the measured approach to AI-driven workforce changes is consistent across different financial services sectors.
- 51.4% are developing internal policies and procedures and nearly 40% actively engaging with regulatory bodies. Just over 6% are taking a "wait-and-see" approach.
- Over 37% of finance executives say seamless integration with existing systems is crucial when choosing AI software.
