Finance trends 2026: strategic leadership across the enterprise
Finance leaders, especially those equipped with advanced AI and cloud, rise to take on bigger-picture challenges.
For many finance leaders, the days are gone when they devoted all of their time to financial management functions, such as reporting, compliance, and capital allocation. A Deloitte analysis of CFO job postings over the five years ending in 2024 found a 19 per cent increase in the number of skills required of CFO applicants. At the same time, the share of CFOs expected to have a strong grip on risk management more than doubled, according to the analysis.
As the scope of finance leadership expands, so does the opportunity for many to influence strategy across the organisation. To gain deeper insight into the changing landscape for CFOs and other finance leaders, Deloitte’s 2026 Finance Trends report surveyed 1,326 global finance leaders in regions around the world and across industries. The survey found that many finance leaders now hold greater accountability for driving business outcomes where they can orchestrate collaboration and drive transformative growth.
More than half of survey respondents (57 per cent) say they rank among the top leaders influencing strategy development across the organisation. Notably, these strategy-influencing leaders also handle a broader scope of responsibilities: across nine categories, they average 20 per cent more responsibilities than other respondents.
In recent years, technology has become a bigger force in strategy setting. Investments in technology can free up capacity and transform decision-making capability to support strategic agility. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise, AI is boosting the strategic impact of the finance function. Marie Myers, the executive vice president and CFO, says, “Our finance organisation’s journey over the past 18 months has been transformative. We are using AI to empower our teams to become strategic partners, leveraging data and technology to drive enterprise-wide value.” She adds, “We’ve reimagined the role of finance, moving from traditional stewardship to proactive leadership enabled by digital transformation.”
Survey results show that strategy-influencing respondents appear to be further along in their AI journeys than their peers. Strategy influencers are more likely to use AI to help address current shortfalls in productivity compared to respondents operating in strategy-supporting roles (43 per cent versus 36 per cent). More than one-third say they’re already delivering clear, measurable value from their AI investments compared to those in strategy-supporting roles (37 per cent versus 17 per cent). And nearly half of the strategy influencers (48 per cent) say they have fully integrated AI agents into specific parts of the finance function, compared to 18 per cent of supporting respondents.
Trends in action: Unlocking value through automation and scaled solutions
While managing an expanding scope of responsibilities may seem daunting, leveraging AI and automation technologies can help finance leaders clear a path to accomplish more strategic — and rewarding — work across the finance function.
Reflecting on the impact of his team’s multi-year journey to standardise, centralise, and automate a large portion of their day-to-day work (such as processing payments or pulling together routine reports), David Chojnowski, Walmart’s corporate controller and chief accounting officer, says, “It’s empowered our team to focus on more value-added work, more forward-looking work, including engaging more with regulators and customers to influence outcomes.” Chojnowski says this transformation has also freed up his team to provide more robust support across functions by equipping business partners “with financial and accounting insights to help them make optimal business decisions”.
Steve Gallucci is U.S. National Managing partner, CFO Program; Ed Hardy is partner and U.S. Finance Services Leader; and Justin Silber is principal and U.S. Finance Transformation leader, all with Deloitte LLP; David Turk is partner, Technology and Transformation, Deloitte Canada LLP; and Tim Murphy is senior manager, Enterprise Growth & Innovation, Deloitte Global.
As published in the 19 November 2025 edition of the WSJ CFO Journal.
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