Deloitte Finance Trends 2027: Finance Leaders Balance AI Ambition With Enterprise Accountability

Deloitte’s “Finance Trends 2027” report surveyed 1,434 finance leaders and found that finance teams are taking on more responsibility for AI and technology investment decisions. The survey results describe how CFO mandates are extending into governance, funding, and cost control as organizations scale AI and advanced technology.

The report says finance leaders are balancing AI and technology plans with “trusted data, human oversight, cost discipline, and resilience” amid regulatory and geopolitical change. It also frames finance as an integrator connecting strategy, investment, risk, and performance to help define and measure stakeholder value.

Survey findings covered multiple areas, including AI trust and spending oversight. Finance leaders reported leading cross-enterprise AI and technology capital allocation (54%), overseeing AI trust covering reliability, accuracy, and explainability (48%), and managing AI and technology spending and cost controls (48%). The report also reported that 46% prioritized infrastructure modernization and data unification and 43% prioritized changes to the finance operating model.

The survey reported broad comfort with agentic workflows (95%) but limited support for full autonomy for critical decisions (14%). It also cited cost-management needs, with 60% expecting more sophisticated AI cost-management practices through 2027, and described challenges including regulatory uncertainty (20%), complex cloud and vendor billing (19%), and difficulty integrating usage data with finance systems (15%). Technology sovereignty was expected by 84% to affect technology-related capital allocation through 2027, and 66% reported using an internally driven, measurement-led approval process, while 27% reported stage-gate funding and 25% required quantified ROI and a formal business case. “The CFO mandate is expanding from financial stewardship to helping shape how the enterprise invests in, governs and creates value from AI and technology. Finance leaders bring the measurement, discipline and enterprise perspective needed to turn AI ambition into responsible, scalable growth — connecting strategy, capital allocation, risk and performance as their organizations move through the next chapter of transformation.” said Ed Hardy, U.S. Finance Services leader, Deloitte. “Finance leaders clearly see the potential of agentic AI, but ambition alone will not drive value at scale. Success will depend on trusted data, strong controls, human oversight and greater visibility into increasingly complex costs. CFOs who bring those elements together can help turn AI investment into sustainable enterprise value.” said Mo Vakili, Finance Transformation National Offering Portfolio leader, Deloitte.

Press release, provided by Cision on behalf of Deloitte. Read the original.