Ask any CFO in London, New York, Dubai, Sydney or Toronto what tops their 2026 agenda, and AI comes up in the first two minutes. But when asked about deployment and actual usage, the conversation turns silent.
“56% of finance leaders now use AI, double the adoption rate seen in 2023. Finance still ranks last among all business functions in AI deployment.”. That sounds like progress but then finance still ranks last among every major business function when it comes to actual deployment. Almost nobody has finished building it.
CFO Connect, State of AI in Finance 2026
1. The Confidence Doesn't Match the Capability
UK CFOs are a useful case study, and not for the reason people expect. Nearly 45% intend to implement AI in treasury and finance operations within the next year, ahead of the 36% global average, and 95% say they feel at least somewhat prepared to do it. On paper, that is a market moving faster than most.
Underneath it, 68% of CFOs admit they’ve been slow to adopt because they don’t know where to start. Preparedness and readiness are not the same thing, and the gap between “we’re thinking about it” and “we’ve done it” is where most finance functions are currently stuck, whether they sit in London, Dubai or Sydney.
2. The Wins So Far Are Smaller Than the Ambition
Where AI has delivered, it’s delivered quietly. Invoice-to-cash and procure-to-pay are where results have been strongest, unglamorous, transactional, easy to measure. Meanwhile, investment attention is already shifting toward FP&A and financial reporting, the higher-stakes ground CFOs actually want AI working on.
That order matters. The finance functions seeing real returns started with the boring problem, then earned the credibility to tackle the harder one. The ones stuck in pilot mode too often tried to skip straight to the exciting use case.
3. Security Concerns Are Doing More Than Slowing Adoption
77% of UK CFOs report major concerns about security and privacy risk in AI: data leaks, accuracy, regulatory exposure. That number should be read as a governance problem, not a technology problem. Most finance leaders are not worried about whether AI works. They’re worried about who is accountable when it doesn’t.
That distinction explains why 45% of finance teams remain stuck in “limited pilot” mode while only 17% are running AI inside core workflows. The blocker is rarely the model. It’s the absence of a finance operating model built to control it properly.
4. Scaling Requires an Operating Model, Not Just a Tool
Of the finance teams that have scaled AI properly, 41% report satisfaction with the outcome, against just 25% still stuck in pilot. The difference between those two groups is not budget or ambition. It’s structure: standardized processes, clear data governance, and a team that already knows how to run compliant finance operations at volume.
That is precisely the environment an outsourced finance function is built to provide. CFOs who route FP&A, reporting and finance operations through a team that already runs AI-enabled processes at scale skip the two-year pilot phase entirely.
FINAL THOUGHT
87% of CFOs now say AI will be extremely or very important to their finance operations in 2026. That number is no longer in dispute anywhere we operate: UK, US, UAE, Australia or Canada. The dispute is entirely about execution.
The CFOs who come out ahead this year will not be the ones who bought the most software. They will be the ones who rebuilt the finance function itself to run AI properly, whether they built that capability in-house or borrowed it from a partner who already has.
Yash Dave, CEO – Unison Direct
Quotes and References
- CFO Connect – State of AI in Finance 2026 – cfoconnect.eu/resources/reports/state-of-ai-in-finance-2026
- Kyriba – CFOs Unveil Key UK Trends in AI Adoption – kyriba.com/blog/cfos-unveil-key-uk-trends-in-ai-adoption
- Deloitte – CFO Guide to Tech Trends 2026 – deloitte.com/us/en/what-we-do/capabilities/finance-transformation/articles/cfo-guide-to-tech-trends.html
- Bain & Company – CFOs Funded the AI Revolution. Now They’re Joining It. – bain.com/insights/cfos-funded-ai-revolution-now-they-are-joining-it
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UNISON DIRECT - From the Leadership's Desk
UNISON DIRECT - From the Leadership's Desk@ 2026 Unison Direct. All rights reserved.