AI is now outperforming qualified accountants on certain technical tasks.
New research from Mercor shows just how quickly things are moving. In May 2025, accountants were ahead of AI models. Now, the latest models have overtaken them.
From what I’m seeing with clients and through using AI myself, the technology is capable of handling up to 90% of the core technical work in finance. That has huge implications for finance careers.
For years, the finance career path was more or less predictable.
You qualified, built your skills and reputation, moved into broader commercial work, took on a team and gradually worked towards an FD or CFO role. At every step, you could see the next rung on the ladder and understand what experience you needed to reach it.
That’s all changing now.
Technical credibility alone won’t carry a finance career in the way it once did. AI is changing how finance teams work, and businesses are asking more of the function as a whole.
For FDs and CFOs, this changes where you spend your time, which skills you (and your team) build and how you explain the value you bring.
The work is changing before the job titles do
The first signs are already showing up in less senior job roles.
AI can write first-draft commentary in seconds and help with structured, data-heavy work (when the process is clear and the information is in decent shape!). It still needs a human who knows what they’re looking at to review it, but it’s already reducing the routine prep we used to hand to junior team members.
It’s safe to say, nobody will miss all of the manual effort.
There is a knock-on effect, though.
People built judgement by preparing forecasts, investigating variances and having their work challenged by experienced managers. If AI takes on more of that preparation, finance leaders need to think about new ways to develop those skills. That makes this a succession issue, not just a junior-development issue.
At the same time, expectations of senior finance leaders are rising. Businesses want them involved while decisions are being formed, bringing commercial understanding, influence and clear recommendations. AI hasn’t created that expectation, but it is making it much harder to ignore.
Where the value is moving
It’s easy to get pulled into the wrong questions: “Will AI replace FP&A managers / Financial Controllers / Finance Directors?”
Those jobs cover too much ground for a simple yes or no answer. What’s actually changing is what happens to the work inside them.
Some tasks will become faster and cheaper. Others will become more valuable because they rely on judgement, context and trust.
I see that work moving into four broad areas.
Automated work
The system handles most of the task, with people stepping in for exceptions and controls. That’s good news for efficiency, but it means routine work isn’t a safe bet for a long-term finance career.
Assisted work
AI produces an analysis, draft or recommendation, then a finance person checks it. A lot of work will sit here over the next few years, making it valuable for the time being. That said, there’s a limit to how far you progress by checking outputs from a process you didn’t design.
Orchestrated work
People design the workflow, decide where AI belongs, set the controls and remain accountable for the result. These are the AI managers. They understand the finance process well enough to redesign it, rather than simply using a tool to speed up one step.
Human-premium work
As the name suggests, this is the work AI can’t do. Commercial judgement, trust, influence and leadership.
Strong finance business partnering belongs here. The analysis gets you into the conversation, but the real value comes from knowing which trade-off matters, reading the room and helping the business commit to a decision.
My view is that, within ten years, most finance teams will spend the bulk of their time in one of two places: running AI-supported processes or working directly with the business.
The risk is that many roles stop somewhere in the middle. People may end up spending most of their time reviewing machine output, keeping the process moving but owning very little of the work around it.
What to do about it
Unfortunately, becoming the best prompt writer in the building is unlikely to move the needle very far. What matters is whether your function and your own role are moving towards the work that will carry more value.
So what should you be thinking about now?
1. Look at where your time is going
Look at your diary from the past month. How many hours did you spend reviewing packs, repairing forecasts, chasing inputs and resolving problems that should have been fixed earlier?
If you’re an FD who spends every Friday repairing the forecast, you may be indispensable to the current process, but you’re not creating space to grow into a broader CFO role. More likely, the process has become dependent on you.
Tip: Pick one recurring drain on senior time and change it. Delegate ownership, redesign the workflow or stop producing work that no longer justifies the effort.
2. Build experience leading AI-supported work
Drafting an email with AI or using it to summarise a long document is useful. It’s also a fairly low bar.
Valuable experience comes from improving a real finance workflow and taking responsibility for the result. Reporting, forecast reviews and board preparation are all sensible places to start because they involve a mix of process, judgement and control.
Tip: Choose one. Work out where AI can help, where human review still matters and how you will know the process is better. Then run it properly.
3. Spend more time where your judgement matters
The human-premium side of finance shows up in everyday moments: an investment case that doesn’t quite stack up, a forecast everyone knows is optimistic or a leadership meeting circling around the same awkward decision.
Tip: Pay attention to where your involvement improves the discussion. If you make a complicated issue easier to understand, challenge an assumption without putting people on the defensive or help the room reach a decision, that’s useful evidence about where your value sits.
The next step is to create more room for that work, rather than letting review, rework and process fixes take over your week.
4. Learn how to explain your value
As roles move around and career paths become less uniform, finance leaders will need a clearer sense of the problems people trust them to solve.
A list of job titles won’t always be enough. Neither will phrases like “experienced finance leader” or “strong stakeholder management”, which could describe almost anyone after ten minutes on LinkedIn.
Tip: Keep this simple. Identify two or three recurring problems you handle particularly well, then attach a result to each one. For example: “I redesigned our forecast review and gave the commercial team four more days to respond.”
That single line tells people something about the problem, your contribution and the result. Use the same approach in your CV, LinkedIn profile, promotion case and recruiter conversations.
Where is your role heading?
The finance career ladder still exists, but it’s becoming a less useful map.
Take half an hour this week and think about where your own time sits across automated, assisted, orchestrated and human-premium work. Then choose one area you want to make progress in over the next six months.
I help finance leaders focus on the things that’ll help them move the needle towards their next career move. Get in touch if you’d like to chat this through!
