CFOs Navigate the AI Revolution: Balancing Opportunities and Challenges in Finance

Here's how AI is transforming finance, according to CFOs

Six CFOs from different industries and regions offer their insights and reflections below on how financial leaders are approaching AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) is both an opportunity and a challenge for businesses worldwide, as highlighted in the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2025. AI is rapidly reshaping the role of chief financial officers (CFOs), offering unprecedented opportunities in automation, data analytics and risk management. But its adoption also comes with challenges as it raises concerns about cybersecurity, regulatory complexities and workforce displacement, creating issues for CFOs as they work to balance investments in AI with risk management strategies to ensure sustainable growth. To gain a better understanding of how financial leaders are approaching AI, the World Economic Forum asked six CFOs from different industries and regions to share their perspectives. "CFOs have evolved to be not only financial stewards, but also strategic drivers of sustainable, financial and digital transformation. They are navigating heightened stakeholder demands for transparency, increasingly complex disclosure requirements, and a growing talent gap. "More often, CFOs and their finance, sustainability, audit, risk, and legal teams find that investing in secure, practical, and responsible AI to transform organizational processes and enhance collaboration, can strengthen stakeholder and investor confidence" - Jill Klindt, EVP, Chief Financial Officer, Workiva "In large-scale organizations, AI and automation are no longer just efficiency tools -- they are fundamental to financial resilience, operational agility and customer-centric innovation. The ability to harness data, automate decision-making and personalize experiences at scale is a key differentiator in today's landscape. "Businesses that strategically invest in AI will not only optimize performance but also future proof their operations, ensuring long-term competitiveness in an increasingly digital economy" - Ziad Chalhoub, Chief Financial Officer at Majid Al Futtaim "Over the past two years, AI has become a priority for CFOs. My insights: AI integration is essential in corporate strategy, CFOs should ensure positive return of investments from AI, and interdisciplinary teams should cultivate AI expertise. "Every leader, including CFOs, must champion AI and understand the systemic risks of generative AI in finance" - Kalin Anev Janse, Chief Financial Officer and Member of the Management Board of the European Stability Mechanism "AI has huge potential for finance functions, but to be meaningful, it requires significant investment, e.g. in data readiness and a balanced cyber-security posture. "At QIA, we are exploring pilot projects with clear metrics to help quantify the return on investment (ROI) on AI investments, including looking at adoption rates, data processing speed, value creation and employee productivity - the success of these pilots will help guide us in our AI journey" - Niall Byrne, CFO at Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) "AI investments are focused on the long-term value of a company. When AI is applied strategically and with discipline, it reduces costs, drives innovation and productivity, unlocks new revenue streams, and flows through the profit and loss with better operating income and earnings per share. For a CFO, there's no better measure of ROI" - Yvonne McGill, CFO, Dell Technologies. "With AI enhancing cybersecurity and automating financial transactions, cyber attackers can also exploit these advancements to create more opportunities for fraud, such as executing phishing schemes or manipulating transaction data. Finding the right pace to adopt AI is essential to harness its benefits while mitigating potential risks" - Julian Lee, Executive Director, Finance at the Airport Authority Hong Kong CFOs must balance sustainability mandates, invest in Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, and adapt to shifting economic and geopolitical landscapes. From environmental, social and governance concerns to capital markets, they face both short-term pressures - like geopolitical tensions and interest rates - and long-term imperatives, such as AI and tech investments. Across industries, CFOs view AI as a strategic asset shaping the future of finance. The key takeaways from these leaders are clear: The World Economic Forum's Chief Financial Officers Community is actively engaging more than 100+ CFOs on how to leverage this technology, among others, to enhance financial decision-making, streamline processes and unlock new avenues for growth. Together, they are working on designing and developing a financial system that effectively allocates capital and investment in support of planet, people and communities - and that includes by incorporating AI.

Beyond the Hype: What CFOs Should Know About AI Agents | PYMNTS.com

When chief financial officers (CFOs) consider implementing agentic artificial intelligence (AI), they should treat it like other technologies their companies have adopted in the past, with some adjustments to mitigate specific risks that come with the new system. There's a good reason for this approach: Agentic systems have been around for a long time, according to George Westerman, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in an interview with PYMNTS. What is agentic AI? Westerman said there's not yet one agreed upon definition, but at its simplest, it is software code that will process information and make a decision or take an action. "The concept is not new," Westerman said. For example, many processes launch and relaunch in Microsoft Windows automatically on a regular basis. Also, automated trading on Wall Street has been around for decades. Read more: Inside Goldman Sachs' Big Bet on AI at Scale What's different is that instead of rules-based bots, where actions are pre-determined, AI agents built on top of generative AI models can dynamically generate responses, understand, adapt and learn while having autonomy and decision-making abilities to complete a task given by the user. "It can do things that traditional computing could not do: It can hold a conversation with a client. It can process unstructured data and documents," Westerman said. However, "we still want to use the same processes to evaluate how to do it." That means CFOs should approach agentic AI like past forms of automation they've incorporated -- evaluating what processes can benefit, identifying costs that can be removed, find potential benefits from accelerating work, and assessing risks to finances and reputation, according to Westerman. CFOs also should use their existing governance policies and risk frameworks to evaluate the new technology -- and revise as necessary. "You should already have very strong governance and policy approaches to automation, and you'd want to apply those same policy approaches to agentic AI but also see where those policies may need to change," he said. See also: Nvidia CEO: Why the Next Stage of AI Needs A Lot More Computing Power The same approach goes for evaluating the ROI of agentic AI, Westerman said. Niall Byrne, CFO at Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday (March 25) that "we are exploring pilot projects with clear metrics to help quantify the return on investment on AI investments, including looking at adoption rates, data processing speed, value creation and employee productivity." Westerman said CFOs must be clear-eyed about costs, since implementing AI is "expensive," like other technology integrations. It was the same case with cloud computing, which is pay-as-you-go, but costs could climb with higher usage in contrast to using your own servers. For AI, the costs include compute charges, cleaning of data, for licenses and changing processes, which is often the larger expense, he said. Westerman sees the biggest agentic AI opportunities for finance in the following areas: What CFOs should do: 1. Align agentic AI initiatives with business goals Clearly define the financial outcomes you aim to achieve with AI agents, such as cost savings, improved forecasting, or enhanced risk management. Investments should be aligned with business objectives and demonstrate clear ROI, according to the World Economic Forum. 2. Manage risks proactively Assess risks related to data security, privacy, regulatory compliance and financial accuracy, Westerman said. Develop contingency plans for AI errors or system failures and maintain clear accountability structures. "Every leader, including CFOs, must champion AI and understand the systemic risks of generative AI in finance," said Kalin Anev Janse, CFO and member of the management board of the European Stability Mechanism, in a World Economic Forum blog post. 3. Invest in the right skills and address job fears If there will be job cuts, tell the staff. "As with any organizational change, you want to be very transparent with your people," Westerman said. Train employees on how to use AI for their jobs and encourage open collaboration among the staff. To find AI engineers, companies don't need to hire the best graduates from the top schools because there's a lot of good talent around, Westerman said. But they should at least have a core group of people who understand AI well, and the rest of the workforce trained on how to use it.