Deloitte 2025 Q2 CFO Express
Issue 18
In the current context of reshaping global trade patterns, economic transformation and upgrading, and the emergence of disruptive technologies, the external ecosystem that enterprises face has become increasingly complex and volatile. Although trade frictions have been temporarily lulled, the uncertainty caused by unclear trade and economic policies and the persistent geopolitical risks continue to pose challenges to business development. At the same time, digital transformation and sustainable development have become urgent necessities. In this process, consumer demands are changing, and regulatory rules are constantly being updated and improves. Therefore, enterprises need to examine growth momentum from a long-term strategic perspective, strengthen risk management with systematic thinking, and optimize and reshape resource allocation with the help of policy benefits and innovative technologies, thereby enhancing their resilience and achieving sustained growth through the crisis.
- Looking ahead to the “15th Five-Year Plan”, what core directions will China’s economic transformation and upgrading mainly focus on? What development opportunities will business have in these changes?
- With the consumption upgrades and residents’ consumption concept updates, which consumption sectors are expected to become high-growth areas? What emerging opportunities will reshape the consumer industry?
- In response to the three major risk areas of supply chain, overseas expansion and AI transformation, how can retail companies build new risk management systems to achieve resilience and growth in a highly uncertain macro environment?
- By 2025, enterprises in Asia Pacific region are under pressures to transform and reshape. As key figures in business transformation, how do CFOs forecast economic prospects? What are the next priorities? What are the strategies to address various challenges?
- Over the next 18-24 months, what disruptive technologies are expected to emerge? How should CFOs understand and evaluate the profound impacts of these technologies on business models and capital allocation from key dimensions?
- PRC Tax Collection and Administration Law (the Draft Revision) has been released for public opinions. Compared with the current law, what important changes have occurred in the Draft Revision?
- How will AI technology reshape the auditing and accounting industry? In large-scale applications, how can professionals in auditing and accounting develop strategies to address challenges brought by AI?
This issue of CFO Express focuses on the key issues facing enterprises in the current macro environment. We hope the insights and analyses provided will inspire corporate decision-making and help business navigate uncertainties and move forward steadily.
| Chief Economist's View | |
| Trends and Outlook | |
| Expertise and Practice | |
| Gen AI Digital Intelligence Frontier |
Chief Economist's View
China-US Trade Agreement: A Pause or a Sustainable Agreement?
Recently, the global economy, financial markets, and asset prices have been continuously impacted by the U.S. tariff policies, bringing far-reaching effects on the international situation, trade system, and policymaking. Sitao Xu, the Chief Economist of Deloitte China, shared his views on the latest trade and tariff situation:
- The China-US trade agreement signed in Geneva on May 12th has alleviated market concerns about a "full-scale trade war" to some extent, but the agreement is not a landmark major agreement, to maintain its effectiveness still requires meeting specific conditions. Maintaining a strong RMB exchange rate is one of these implicit conditions.
- Since Trump announced "reciprocal tariffs" in early April, investors' confidence in the U.S. dollar as a safe-haven and primary reserve currency has been severely damaged. The New Taiwan dollar, RMB, and Japanese yen have all appreciated slightly against the U.S. dollar recently. If the currencies of most surplus economies strengthen against the U.S. dollar, market concerns about the U.S. fiscal situation may ease, which would also help reduce market volatility.
- For the agreement to be truly and lastingly implemented, China needs to expand its purchases of U.S. products, and the U.S. should welcome Chinese investments in non-national security sectors. However, even if other major economies (such as the EU and Japan) sign trade agreements with the U.S. in the coming months, the global average tariff rate will still be structurally higher than it was before April 2 this year.
Trends and Outlook
Looking Ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan | Key Forces Shaping China's Economy in the Next Five Years
Looking ahead to the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, China's economy will enter a critical phase of strategic implementation, industrial transformation, and corporate transition. Deloitte, combining global perspectives with local insights, has launched a series of articles titled "Prospects for the 15th Five-Year Plan," which aims to analyze opportunities and challenges in the changing landscape, providing valuable references for enterprises and institutions formulating their "15th Five-Year Plan." The first article, "Key Forces Shaping China's Economy Over the Next Five Years," explores macro trends over the next five years, thereby observing the major direction of China's economic transformation and upgrading.
Cultivating New Quality Productive Forces. According to national plans, the proportion of funding for basic research during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period may exceed 10%, while more R&D investment will be directed towards strategic emerging industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), information technology application innovation (ITAI), and biotechnology, accelerating the realization of core technology localization. Additionally, the next five years will continue to optimize the technological innovation system, including growing leading enterprises, enhancing the training system of sci-tech talents, as well as improving mechanisms for intellectual property protection and incentives for scientific and technological achievements commercialization. Furthermore, China will continue to promote international technological cooperation.
Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In terms of comprehensive digital transformation and industry-wide intelligence, by 2030, the share of the digital economy in GDP is expected to exceed 60%, with over 50% coverage of smart factories among major industrial firms, and the digital transformation rate of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is expected to surpass 30%. In the construction of computing and communication digital infrastructure, total computing capacity is projected to exceed 500 EFLOPS during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, and by 2030, China is expected to become the world's largest 6G market (1.3 trillion yuan). In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the next five years will see the in-depth promotion of large AI models in complex scenarios such as healthcare, aerospace, and new energy vehicles, along with further improvements in AI ethical norms and governance systems. Regarding the market-oriented allocation of data elements, the scale of the data elements is anticipated to exceed 500 billion yuan during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.
Green Transition in All Aspects. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the focus of deep decarbonization in the energy system will gradually shift from the supply side to the consumption side, with the power grid investment potentially reaching new highs. In terms of industries, breakthroughs are expected in the sales of new energy vehicles, the efficiency of perovskite/ silicon tandem photovoltaic cells, the scale of the energy-saving and environmental protection industry, and the full-chain development of hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and utilization. Meanwhile, emerging industries that support green production and lifestyles, such as bio-based plastics, green building materials, and green smart home appliances, are accelerating their market penetration. However, it is worth noting that Chinese industries will face more severe challenges from tariffs and green trade barriers. To support the green transition, China will accelerate the development of a diversified green financial system and improve the integration mechanisms between carbon markets and electricity-carbon markets.
High-Level Opening Up. In terms of "going global," China's outbound investment is expected to maintain steady growth and diversification, focusing on strategic emerging industries such as new generation of information technology and new energy vehicles, cultivating countries along the "Belt and Road" and gradually expanding to regions like Latin America and the Middle East. By 2030, China's stock of outbound investment is projected to exceed $4 trillion. On the "bringing in" side, the scale of foreign investment is expected to remain relatively stable, with China continuing to be a significant destination for global foreign direct investment. In the import sector, China is expected to overtake the United States before 2028 to become the world's largest importer. Notably, the structure of the current account is upgrading, with a gradual shift from a trade surplus to investment income.
Demographic Changes. Over the next five years, China's population will experience accelerated aging. According to UN Population Division projections, the proportion of the population aged 65 and above will exceed 15% by 2025 and reach 18.26% by 2030, far surpassing the average of 12% for middle-income countries. This will create new consumption growth points in the "silver economy," with the market size projected to reach 30 trillion yuan by 2035, growing at an annual compound rate of about 15.7%. Opportunities are particularly highlighted in healthcare, intelligent elderly-friendly products, and the senior tourism and culture industry. Additionally, China's population quality has significantly improved, and the "talent dividend" of the labor force set to replace the "population dividend."
China's Consumer Goods and Retail Industry Overview 2025: Exploring New Growth Opportunities within the Consumption Upgrades
Affected by objective factors such as insufficient expectations for resident employment and income growth, domestic effective demand is insufficient, and the consumer market has undergone structural adjustments. Since September 2024, a full range of policies covering both supply and demand sides have effectively stimulated consumption, leading to a significant acceleration in the growth of the total retail sales of consumer goods from January to February 2025. This has also further invigorated the capital market. Deloitte's “China Consumer Goods and Retail Industry Overview 2025: Exploring New Growth Opportunities in the Upgrading of Consumption Structure” provides an in-depth analysis of the performance of over 550 listed consumer goods and retail listed companies. By comparing the performance of leading enterprises across various segments, the report reveals the development trends in the consumer goods and retail industry and explores the key drivers influencing sector performance.
The increasing proportion of service consumption expenditure is driving a continuous upgrade of China's consumption structure and stimulating growth in transportation, education, culture, and entertainment sectors. Meanwhile, consumer preferences are becoming more diversified, with emotional consumption and high-cost performance gaining popularity. For example, the IP co-branding model meets consumer demands through emotional resonance and innovative experience. Similarly, self-indulgence and companion consumption continue to exhibit robust growth, with categories such as Chinese baijiu, pet food, and cosmetics each surpassing a 10% increase. Additionally, middle-aged and young consumers are beginning to opt for sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns, while the concepts of health and digital consumption are permeating all age groups. In the retail sector, traditional offline formats such as specialty stores and supermarkets have experienced significant declines, whereas emerging channels such as e-commerce and instant retail have maintained rapid growth.
From the perspective of the capital market, the primary market for the consumer industry entered an adjustment period starting in 2024. During this period, sectors with high certainty such as food and beverage, catering and entertainment, and domestic cosmetics received more investment opportunities. In the secondary market, the number of listed companies decreased, but the amount raised in initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2024 increased compared to the previous two years, primarily driven by high-growth sectors such as sportswear, home appliances, domestic beauty products, and tea beverages.
The updating of consumption concepts and structural changes will bring new development opportunities to the consumer industry:
- The scale of China's pan-ACGN (anime, comic, game, novel) peripheral market has continued to expand over the past decade, reflecting the market potential and marketing value of the "IP+" model in consumer brands, retail formats, and local cultural and tourism brands.
- The online shopping usage rate in China approaches 90%, with a rich digital consumption ecosystem is promoting the application of generative AI technology. This enhances customer experience, optimizes marketing strategies, and improves supply chain efficiency to boost consumption.
- Nearly 60% of consumers are concerned about offline stores that emphasize green, low-carbon, and sustainable development, making it increasingly important to understand residents' preferences for green and low-carbon lifestyles and to explore new green consumption scenarios.
- Enterprises are accelerating their exploration of new growth in overseas markets through methods such as overseas acquisitions, self-buit investments, and supplier collaborations, continuously expanding in sectors including catering, light industry, home appliances, and cross-border e-commerce.
2025 China Retail Risk Management Research Report
The multifaceted influences of geopolitical conflicts, technological innovation, and market demand differentiation have created more complex and uncertain environment for retail companies. Therefore, traditional risk management models are no longer sufficient to address cross-sector risks. Companies need to build multi-dimensional risk management framework through organizational resilience, technological empowerment, and talent upgrading, shifting from passive defense to proactive prevention. In April 2025, Deloitte, in collaboration with the China Chain Store & Franchise Association (CCFA), jointly released the “China Retail Risk Management Research Report”, focusing on three major risk areas—supply chain, going global, and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation—to provide forward-looking insights to help retail chain companies establish a robust management systems.
Deloitte has identified specific manifestations of three major risks in supply chain, global expansion, and AI transformation:
- Global trade restrictions, tariff adjustments, and rising logistics costs pose risks across multiple supply chain stags, including raw material procurement, manufacturing, and logistics and distribution.
- Chinese retail companies face diverse risks and challenges in their global expansion, such as compliance operations, cultural and market adaptation, talent cultivation, and organizational management.
- Intelligent technologies introduces various risks and uncertainties, among which the most concerning for surveyed executives are AI-related security vulnerabilities (86%), surveillance (83%), and privacy (83%) risks.
Figure: Measures to address three major risk areas
In the future, key factors such as strategic operational efficiency, AI-driven technological transformation, sustained focus on sustainability, and innovative revenue sources will continue to drive significant changes in the retail industry. Against this backdrop, companies need to establish a comprehensive risk management systems, leveraging technology to enable end-to-end risk monitoring, assessment and response, while cultivating interdisciplinary risk management talent to address the increasingly complex and dynamic risk network.
Expertise and Practice
2025 APAC CFO Survey Report
In the current changing landscape, organizations in the Asia-Pacific region are under pressure to transform and reshape. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are increasingly required to play a crucial role in driving organizational change and fostering sustainable value creation. Deloitte Asia-Pacific members conducted a survey of 469 CFOs from various countries and industries, exploring their priorities, views on economic conditions, and strategies for addressing various challenges.
Our key findings are as follows:
- Risks and uncertainties. 60% of CFOs in the Asia-Pacific region is optimistic about their companies’ financial prospects for 2025, while remaining highly vigilant about macroeconomic uncertainties. Among these, inflation, interest rates and liquidity (79%), global economic slowdown (78%), and potential regional recession (73%) are the top three concerns, indicating CFOs’ worry about stagflation risks. Additionally, geopolitical risks remain prominently significant.
- Generative AI. Nearly half of CFOs anticipate that generative AI will substantially transform business and industries within two years, with 79% aiming to enhance productivity and 69 % focusing on cost savings. The primary challenges include talent skill shortages (55 %), data resources limitations (44%), and governance issues (33%). While companies embrace the potential of AI, they also face constraints related to technology, human resources, and conflicts in strategic priorities.
- Growth and transactions. 83% of surveyed CFOs prioritize revenue growth as the primary objective, followed by cost control. Notably, driving M&A transactions has become a key approach, with 47% expecting an increase in transaction volume to over the next three years. The main drivers include consolidating market leadership (48%), accelerating business model transformation (36%), and optimizing asset portfolios(31%). Most companies have increased the frequency of asset valuations, with 62% conducting at least biannual assessments to optimize investment portfolios, mitigate risk, and support strategic implementation.
- Business operations and talent management. 79% of companies intend to integrate more automation and digital technologies in their operations, while 38% planning to expand the use of internal shared-service centers. In terms of human resources strategies, 62% of respondents aim to upskill employees to adapt to automation-driven transformation, and 61% plan to free up labor through digital investments. Companies in China (76%) and Japan (79%) are particularly proactive in these initiatives, with larger enterprises showing more significant efforts.
- Sustainability. 27% of companies in Asia-Pacific region plan to increase investments, with actions focused on ESG disclosure (57%), performance metrics formulation (54%), and risk assessments (51%). Although some organizations have integrated sustainability into their operations, progress remains uneven due to challenges such as difficulty in assessing impacts, talent and capabilities, limited budgets and talent shortages.
Amidst the transformation challenges faced by enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region, the role of CFOs will continue to expand, helping organizations balance value creation and risk management in complex environments, seize opportunities and embrace changes.
How CFOs Can Adapt to Six Trends of Technology
A recent Deloitte report, "A CFO‘s guide to Tech Trends 2025," reveals that a wave of trends in technology emerging over the next 18–24 months will profoundly impact business operating models and capital allocation. These trends have the potential to create significant business value but also require substantial investment. This duality requires CFOs to understand and evaluate them in order to strategically invest in the present alongside the company to achieve future growth.
1. What's next for AI?
In the past, companies tended to directly purchase off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) to accelerate AI deployment. However, this approach struggles to balance professionalism and flexibility across all scenarios. Driven by personalized needs such as security, energy consumption, and intelligent agent collaboration, more and more enterprises are turning to tailor-made small models. Through multimodal collaboration, these small models can efficiently handle specific tasks, generate multimodal content, run complex simulations, and provide personalized virtual assistant services. CFOs must weigh the benefits and risks of investing in different AI models, consider new trust and risk measurement standards, to help enterprises optimize operations and financial performance. The organizational integration path of data governance, model balance, and AI will be three key considerations for CFOs.
2. The intelligent core: AI changes everything for core modernization
Integrating AI into an enterprise’s core architecture has triggered systemic evolution, aiming to enhance user interaction experiences. This will drive process innovation and efficiency improvements while increasing system complexity, placing higher demands on technical and robust governance capabilities. CFOs need to improve governance systems to ensure data risks are controllable, while focusing on three key issues: strategies for integrating core systems with AI, business collaboration, and managing complexity and risks.
3. Spatial computing takes center stage
Spatial computing will integrate AI to drive interaction innovation, helping enterprises across multiple industries simulate scenarios, optimize decisions, foresight and respond to user needs, and integrate financial and operational data digitally to enable real-time insights, cost optimization, and efficient capital planning—providing finance teams with a brand-new method of data interaction. Key questions for CFOs to consider include the impact of spatial computing on the value chain, operational efficiency, and decision-making processes, as well as how to invest in and prepare data.
4. Hardware is eating the world
AI is entering a new era of hardware innovation. The new generation of AI-specific chips enables AI models to be embedded in personal computers and edge devices, enabling localized, offline computing that enhances user experiences and lays the foundation for future computing infrastructure. This will drive the rise of hardware, strengthen computing power and privacy protection, improve energy efficiency, and advance the Internet of Things and robotics revolution, pushing industries toward intelligent and autonomous transformation. As hardware upgrades are close at hand, CFOs should allocate capital rationally, balancing costs, energy consumption, and data value, take the technological dominance to guide AI strategies, and should assess the cost-effectiveness, energy consumption, and regulatory impacts of AI hardware versus cloud solutions.
5. IT, amplified: AI elevates the reach (and remit) of the tech talent
IT is undergoing a deep AI-driven transformation, gradually moving away from traditional models toward a new paradigm of automation, efficient collaboration, and polarized development. Driven by AI, IT will deeply integrate with business operations and expand its responsibilities. This requires CFOs to guide collaborative governance, improve efficiency while controlling costs, and choose optimal service models to balance internal investment and outsourcing. CFOs should also review the enterprise’s ability to manage AI expenses to balance benefits and risks.
6. The new math: Solving cryptography in an age of quantum
Quantum computing may threaten existing encryption systems, and organizations should deploy emerging encryption standards as early as possible to prevent data from breaches and leaks. Finance departments should work together with business units to assess the trade-offs of investment in addressing quantum threats, proactively deploy encryption safeguards, and ensure long-term data security. CFOs should evaluate the threat of quantum computing to existing encryption systems (CRQC), inventory encryption systems, and formulate transformation plans to ensure the organization’s capabilities of quantum responses and optimize strategic priorities.
Focus on the Draft Revision of the Tax Collection and Administration Law: Interpretation of Key Points in the Draft for Public Opinions
The State Taxation Administration (STA) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) publicly released a prospect revision draft of the PRC Tax Collection and Administration Law (the Draft Revision) on March 28,2025. The Draft Revision consists of 106 articles, which, while maintaining the existing legal framework, further improves the protection mechanism for taxpayers' rights and the tax compliance guidance system through new articles added, deleted, and amended, aiming to build a more standardized and transparent tax legal environment. This issue of the Tax Review will select several legal articles that have changed in the Draft Revision compared to the current law and will briefly discuss key points related to industry concerns.
Strengthening compliance requirements for government agencies to build a unified national market. To reduce regional differences in tax administrative law enforcement, the Draft Revision adds articles requiring the State Taxation Administration (STA) to legally enhance the consistency and standardization of regional tax enforcement, and stipulates that local governments at all levels, relevant departments, entities, and individuals shall not set tax revenue targets for tax authorities. Regarding abuse of tax amount assessed, the Draft Revision introduces regulations to standardize the management of assessed collection, requiring the State Taxation Administration to establish a unified national system for assessed collection.
Enhance the protection of taxpayers' lawful rights and interests. In line with the goal of building a social credit system in the field of tax governance, the Draft Revision adds new provisions to clarify that the state shall establish and improve a tax integrity system, implementing mechanism that encourage those with good credit records and punish the opposites in the field of tax administration. Regarding taxpayer remedies, the administrative reconsideration requirement for "tax clearance precondition" in tax disputes has been abolished. This revision helps to alleviate the financial pressure on taxpayers or withholding agents who need to pay taxes in advance to exercise their right to relief, especially in cases involving significant amounts of tax.
Establish a normalized tax regulation system for the digital economy. In response to tax supervision of platform economies, the Draft Revision clarifies the tax-related information reporting obligations of internet platform enterprises and grants tax authorities the right to inspect these enterprises. To strengthen the supervision of taxpayer’s funds, the Draft Revision grants tax authorities to inspect and executive power on non-bank payment accounts of taxpayers. Additionally, the Draft Revision establishes the legal status and force of electronic vouchers and documents.
Ensuring national tax revenue security and expanding legal measures for tax collection. For practices such as appointing nominal legal representatives, abusing the independent status of corporate entities and limited liability of shareholders to evade tax payments, the Draft Revision expands the scope of persons subject to exit restrictions to the “principal or actual controlling persons” of the taxpayers has outstanding tax payables. It also explicitly clarifies the application of the “piercing the corporate veil” (or “denial of corporate legal personality”) rule within tax administration for the first time, authorizing tax authorities to pursue unpaid tax payables from company shareholders under certain circumstances. This Draft Revision adjusts the expression of related party transactions from “related enterprises” to “related parties,” thereby expanding the scope of regulatory objects under the Tax Collection and Administration Law. In terms of special tax adjustments, it also introduces general anti-tax avoidance rules.
Improve the definition of tax violations and corresponding penalties. The Draft Revision replaces the wording of tax evasion with tax dodge and categorizes tax evasion behaviors according to relevant judicial interpretations. At the same time, Draft Revisions maintains a strong regulatory stance on Fapiao-related tax violations, raising the upper limit of administrative penalties for such violations. It also incorporates provisions on “issuing false Fapiao” from the Fapiao Management Measures, enhancing supervision over falsely issued Fapiao and adding provision for penalizing acts that assist falsely issuing Fapiao.
Clarify the legal nature and relevant rules of "late payment surcharges." Distinguish from the "late fees" in PRC Administrative Compulsory Law, the Draft Revision adjusts the current term “late payment surcharges” to “delayed tax payment surcharges”. Additionally, the Draft Revision expands on scenarios in which late (delayed) fees are not imposed or waived, listing several related specific situations.
Clarify the special provisions on non-refund overpaid taxes. According to the current Tax Collection and Administration Law, taxpayers who find that they have overpaid tax may apply for a refund within three years. Building on this general provision, the Draft Revision introduces an additional regulation stating that overpaid taxes declared for purposes such as obtaining financing, going public, improving performance, or acquiring qualifications will not be refunded.
Gen AI Digital Intelligence Frontier
AI Reshaping Auditing: Exploring the Path of Industry Transformation Driven by Artificial Intelligence
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to a profound transformation in the auditing and accounting industries. Currently, AI demonstrates significant efficiency in minimizing accounting errors and reducing the risk of audit failure. However, the integration of AI also introduces new challenges to the industry, especially in talent management. This article will delve into how AI is reshaping the auditing and accounting sectors and analyze how professionals should develop strategies to address the opportunities and challenges brought about by technological changes.
AI can bring about significant transformation in three major application scenarios, covering information processing and standardization, information analysis and integration.
In terms of information processing and standardization, AI leverages enterprise-specific knowledge graphs, relying on the powerful analytical capabilities of large language models (LLMs), to drastically reduce information retrieval time through natural language question-answering, thereby freeing up human resources for higher-value analytical tasks. Moreover, generative AI can further break down barriers between structured and unstructured data, efficiently extracting key information and uncovering facts as well as performing rapid data reconciliation effectively. As for information analysis, traditional linear models have limitations in accuracy for predicting accounting fraud, whereas the introduction of AI can greatly enhance precision. Graph-based Machine Learning (Graph ML) can efficiently identify abnormal accounting entries, while the application of Automated Machine Learning (Auto ML) enables real-time risk monitoring. In the field of information integration, generative AI has the capability to rapidly integrate and interpret information and conduct compliance checks, which may completely revolutionize audit and accounting workflows, achieving high human–machine collaboration, allowing professionals to focus on framework design, results validation, and expert judgement, thereby delivering higher-quality insights.
Despite the promising prospects of AI in the fields of auditing and accounting, its large-scale practical implementation still faces multiple challenges. First, auditors generally lack the specialized expertise necessary to assess AI applicability and understand its technical limitations. Second, the mechanism for identifying and assessing AI-related risks are not yet mature, and there is significant uncertainty in human–machine comparative evaluation. Moreover, employees have low trust in AI; studies show that confidence in AI-driven recommendations decreases by an average of 23% compared to human-generated advices. Data privacy issues also pose significant barriers, as companies are wary of data sharing due to the risk of data breaches. The regulatory framework for AI technology is still underdeveloped, which further exacerbates hesitations of organization in adopting innovative solutions. To fully unleash the potential of AI, the industry should enhance technical training for employees and regulators, alleviate customer concerns, deepen understanding of AI, and improve governance capabilities, thereby promoting its standardized application in audit processes.
The rapid development of AI is markedly enhancing the efficiency and output of auditing and accounting professionals. Studies show that mainstream AI application like ChatGPT can already replicate many core skills associated with auditors and accountants. Therefore, identifying core skills and reshaping individual capabilities is crucial. Accountants and auditors should embrace change and actively meet challenges by learning how to correctly, efficiently, and critically apply AI tools to achieve more effective human–machine collaboration. Practitioners should consider reallocating their time, for example, by delegating tasks such as information collection and initial idea generation to generative AI, thus focusing more on high-value activities like generating insights and professional judgement. Notably, cognitive skills, creative thinking, and technical literacy is important. Additionally, the industry must be open-minded to avoid over-reliance on AI and robust professional judgement.
If you have any enquiry, please contact:
Maggie Yang
Partner
Deloitte China Consulting Businesses
Phone: +86 10 8520 7822
Email: megyang@deloittecn.com.cn
Michael Jin
Partner
Deloitte China Consulting Businesses
Phone: +86 21 2316 6317
Email: mijin@deloittecn.com.cn
Emily Leung
Director
Deloitte China CFO Program
Phone: +852 2238 7339
Email: emleung@deloitte.com.hk
Bo Sun
Senior Manager
Deloitte China CFO Program
Phone: +86 10 8512 4866
Email: bsun@deloittecn.com.cn
