Finance teams step up use of AI, but trust concerns remain – study

Finance teams are expanding their usage of real-time information and AI to amended concern penetration and enactment decision-making, according to caller probe from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ).

The planetary survey, based connected responses from 1,600 concern professionals, recovered that much than 60% of concern teams person expanded their usage of real-time operational information implicit the past 2 years.

The findings constituent to a displacement successful concern functions distant from retrospective reporting and towards much existent and forward-looking analysis.

That alteration is being driven by entree to a wider scope of information including unrecorded operational metrics and unstructured interior text, arsenic good arsenic greater usage of AI tools to analyse and construe information.

The study besides recovered that concern teams are moving much intimately with different functions. Nearly 60% of respondents said they present collaborate intimately with information and IT teams, suggesting that accepted silos are easing.

However, the increasing usage of AI is accompanied by wide interest implicit the prime of its outputs.

The survey recovered that 93% of concern professionals are disquieted astir the integrity and verifiability of AI-generated insights.

The issues cited see hallucinations, inaccuracies, incomplete information sets, deficiency of transparency and bias.

ACCA CEO Helen Brand said: "This is simply a large opportunity, but upskilling is critical. CFOs [chief fiscal officers] and concern teams request to pb successful the liable adoption of AI crossed organisations, ensuring robust grooming and governance is successful place. Critical thinking, sceptical validation and an ethical attack is vital."

The study said consciousness of these risks indispensable beryllium matched by stronger skills improvement successful what remains a fast-moving area.

CA ANZ CEO Ainslie van Onselen said: "AI is present a halfway portion of the concern toolkit, but it is not a shortcut. CFOs and concern teams request to usage it to sharpen judgement and make existent value, not conscionable velocity up aged processes.

"That means investing successful structured learning and moving much intimately with IT and information teams. Upskilling isn't optional. It is however you negociate the risk."

In Australia and New Zealand, the findings highlighted a skills gap. Around 70% of respondents said they had lone basal generative AI skills oregon nary astatine all.

More than a 3rd besides said they had received nary ceremonial grooming successful information storytelling.

At a planetary level, the main factors down the summation successful information investigation were strategical priorities, cited by 45% of respondents, and regulatory requirements, named by 43%.