Finance trends 2026

Trend 1 - The speed priority: Advanced scenario planning and agile governance for navigating uncertainty

Finance chiefs often walk a razor’s edge between two unrelenting demands: managing cost efficiency while identifying opportunities to invest in business growth. From a cost-optimization perspective, it can be hard to ignore one of the biggest contributors to volatility: supply chain disruptions. Localized pressures, such as labour shortages, combined with cross-border challenges, are among the business factors contributing to higher costs, and can throw global sourcing into disarray.¹

In tandem, it may be increasingly difficult for finance leaders to keep pace and identify the most important investments to help fuel growth and innovation. Three-quarters of the leaders we surveyed say their organization requires either a moderate amount or “a lot more” resources to maximize investment opportunities across the business.

Our survey corroborates a high level of uncertainty and complexity in the current environment. Asked to rank their top three priorities, there was little consensus. Planning for external challenges and adopting new technological capabilities tied for highest priorities among respondents. But there was only a 4-percentage-point difference between these responses and the fifth most-cited priority: protecting resources by reducing costs (44%). Overall, this lack of consensus suggests that, 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,” with many finance leaders likely juggling several top priorities at the same time.

How leaders maintain focus amid competing priorities can influence a company’s agility and resilience. Our research shows that many finance leaders are taking steps to bolster scenario planning and governance structures to better anticipate and respond to their changing environments. Asked to identify their plans to help manage uncertainty (figure 1), respondents cite the need to bolster advanced scenario-planning capabilities (30%) and build more agile governance models to support faster decision-making (28%). Similarly, advanced scenario planning and agile models lead the list of capabilities respondents say they need to make more informed capital-allocation decisions.

Trend 2 – Finance leaders are strategy leaders, especially when they embrace advanced AI and cloud

For many, gone are the days when influential finance leaders spent most of their time on the core foundations of financial management. A 2024 Deloitte analysis of CFO job postings revealed the number of skills CFO applicants were asked to bring to the table increased 19% over a five-year period. At the same time, the share of CFOs expected to have a strong grip on risk management more than doubled, according to the same analysis.

As the scope of finance leadership expands, their influence on strategy across the organization seems to grow in step. Overall, we found that many finance leaders are holding greater accountability for driving business outcomes where they can orchestrate collaboration and drive transformative growth. More than half of survey respondents (57%) say they are now among the top leaders influencing strategy development across the organization (figure 2). Notably, we found these strategy-influencing leaders also handle a broader scope of responsibilities: Across nine categories, they average 20% more responsibilities than other respondents.²

Trend 3 - Focus. Precision. Discipline: How finance-led cost management helps drive measurable value

When finance leaders own cost and expense management, what can set them apart are the tools they bring to cost discipline along with a focus on accountability. Just over a third (36%) of finance leaders surveyed (and 42% of CFOs surveyed) are primarily responsible for cost and expense management for their organizations. Yet these leaders are more likely to consistently meet, or exceed, their cost-savings goals compared to respondents who say they play a supporting role in enterprise cost management (47% versus 39%).

Respondents who are taking greater ownership of cost management often bring together cloud infrastructure, intelligent automation, and specialized in-house expertise to help strike a balance between growth and cost control.

Finding flexibility in the cloud

Organizations require greater flexibility in their digital structures. In Deloitte’s 2025 MarginPlus survey, the top two internal barriers to organizational success are the “inability to enable digital infrastructure to meet new external business conditions and scale” (49%) and a “lack of flexibility in existing assets and infrastructure to respond to external demand” (45%).

At its core, the cloud can offer financial and operational flexibility; companies can scale resources up or down without necessarily locking in fixed infrastructure costs. Cloud-based solutions can minimize up-front expenditures for hardware and provide more scalable infrastructure to conduct analysis for identifying cost-saving opportunities.³

Leveraging AI to improve efficiency

Many companies are turning to AI to help cut operational expenses while increasing speed and accuracy.

Finance leaders can use AI to streamline certain repetitive processes or eliminate manual verification in certain transactions. For example, a few of our interviewees say they are using AI to scan their accounts receivables and proactively analyze transactions to identify potential errors and identify which accounts have a higher potential for delinquency.

Other Deloitte Global research also highlights how AI can be especially helpful in the realm of tax. Specifically, some tax leaders are using AI to help identify efficiencies in transfer-pricing documentation and corporate income tax returns and payments.⁴

Using dedicated teams to take a disciplined, proactive approach

Another way many finance leaders excel at cost management is by treating it as a continuous, strategic discipline, not a one-off initiative. They invest in dedicated expense management teams, which help find opportunities through cross-functional collaboration and process improvement.

Trend 4 - The journey to agentic insights: Many finance teams embrace AI, but ROI and agentic implementations often lag

Our survey shows that nearly every finance department is at least experimenting with AI use cases. Impressively, 63% of respondents say they have already fully deployed and are actively using AI solutions in their finance function. Yet, for many, there is still runway to amplify the reach and measurable impact of their AI investments. For instance, among respondents actively using AI solutions, only 21% believe those AI investments have already delivered clear, measurable value; and only 14% have reached the additional milestone of fully integrating AI agents directly into the finance function (figure 4).

Trend 5 - Infusing tech talent in finance: Where data scientists and accountants meet

Building organizational agility requires more than finding the appropriate technology infrastructure to help enable it. In our survey, almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) say they plan to infuse more technical skills and capabilities within their function over fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

Finance functions appear to be getting squeezed at both ends of the labor pool: The number of CPA exam candidates has fallen by 27% over the past decade, and the number of accounting graduates continues to slide as well.⁶ Meanwhile, three quarters of accounting professionals are within 15 years of retirement, according to the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants.⁷ As AI increasingly gets integrated into finance, the work and capabilities of the function may shift in step. How finance leaders meet their pressing talent needs will likely have major implications for their departments going forward. It may even alter what a finance professional or department looks like in the future.

Topping the list of the skills many surveyed finance leaders are prioritizing for the next fiscal year are AI and automation, along with data analysis and technology integration. The top action respondents are taking to meet their talent acquisition and retention challenges is “utilizing AI and automation to address productivity gaps.”

Core business and finance skills, such as strategic decision-making, cost-management expertise, regulatory and legal compliance, and business planning and forecasting, appear lower on the priority list for development. Leadership and adaptability and advanced scenario modeling garner similar response rates as these more traditional finance capabilities, indicating how much emphasis some finance leaders may be placing on making their organizations more agile and responsive to rapid change.

Leading finance into the future: Top takeaways from our interviews

Levitating above each of these trends is a constantly changing environment. Throughout our interviews, leaders continually acknowledged that the sliding doors of opportunity seem to open and close at a breakneck pace. Still, we found the following recommendations continued to rise to the surface:

• Create a connected data infrastructure to build your base. Whether it’s to optimize costs or lay the groundwork for embedding AI, finance leaders constantly referenced a need to bring together previously disconnected data under a single roof.
• Expand your value as a leader beyond the traditional finance function. As the scope of finance expands, new skills and mindsets will need to be brought to the table. This means blending the skills of finance, business acumen, technology, and maybe most importantly, the more human-orientated skills of curiosity and critical thinking. As several interviewees stressed, the world will continue to change, but the need to think critically and bring a sense of curiosity to problem solving will remain constant.
• Foster agility by prioritizing efficient governance and scenario planning. Even with the right infrastructure and skills and capabilities, activating the enhanced capabilities of finance will require agile decision-making. Leaders shared how they have redesigned their teams to help ensure they have the right balance of autonomy and support to lead finance into the future.

The speed of change will likely continue to accelerate. Finance leaders who proactively reimagine their traditional responsibilities to create new value for their organizations can better position themselves to help impact strategy and spur enterprisewide growth.