The CFO role is no longer just about financial stewardship, it’s about shaping technology strategy, navigating political and regulatory uncertainty, and building organizations that can adapt as fast as the world changes. AI is rewriting workflows, cloud environments are continuing to redefine infrastructure, and compliance pressures continue to shift. In a landscape defined by constant disruption, success isn’t just about making the right decisions. It’s about creating a finance function that can learn, pivot, and thrive no matter what comes next.
These five trends stand out as critical for CFOs who want to lead, not lag, in 2026:
Trend #1: Agentic AI and the Workflow Revolution…Redefining How Work Gets Done
By 2028, 33% of all enterprise software applications are expected to incorporate agentic AI1, a shift that will fundamentally change how work gets done. That’s because, unlike previous tech waves, agentic AI isn’t just a tool. It’s a collaborator. AI agents can plan, execute, and adapt entire processes autonomously, transforming workflows from static sequences into dynamic, self-optimizing systems.
For CFOs, this means rethinking workforce development and training from the ground up. Traditional transformation focused on speed, cost, and agility. Transformation shaped by agentic AI demands bigger questions:
- How can AI agents reshape financial strategy to be proactive, not reactive?
- Which workflows should be fully automated to free talent for higher-value work?
- What governance frameworks ensure AI enhances human judgment rather than replaces it?
The disruptive nature of agentic AI makes human-led governance and principle-based oversight – anchored in transparency, privacy, and adaptability – essential. CFOs must prioritize and build technical fluency across finance teams, define clear objectives for AI agents, and embed continuous learning into the fabric of their organizations.
The payoff? Finance operations that are predictive, adaptive, and capable of self-improvement—unlocking a new era of intelligent transformation.
Trend #2: CIO-CFO Collaboration…Driving AI and Financial Tech Decisions, Together
As AI agents are changing how work gets done, who then orchestrates that change? Enter the CIO–CFO partnership.
Eighty-two percent of CIOs now lead enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives2, and nowhere is this shift more visible than in financial software decisions, once considered primarily the CFO’s domain.
One reason is that corporate performance management (CPM) tools – essential for planning, forecasting, and compliance – are increasingly powered by AI for predictive analytics and automation. As these tools evolve beyond traditional functionality, decisions about their adoption can no longer sit in silos. That means, what might initially look like a potential turf war is, in reality, an opportunity for CFOs and CIOs to align and jointly shape the enterprise’s AI-enabled future.
By collaborating on finance software decisions, these leaders can create a blueprint for broader alignment, ensuring technology investments deliver measurable outcomes, scalability, and security. CIOs bring expertise in architecture and integration. CFOs ensure platforms meet compliance needs and improve, or completely transform, real finance workflows.
The momentum is clear: 93% of CFOs and CIOs agree AI integration has already increased collaboration3, and most say this partnership significantly impacts innovation, efficiency, and risk management. For CFOs, success isn’t about becoming IT experts, it’s about articulating finance priorities, championing change management, and developing enough technical fluency to engage on data models and integration. Done right, this collaboration will set the stage for smarter AI-driven decisions across the enterprise.
Trend #3: Hyperscaler Neutrality…Safeguarding Flexibility in a Cloud-Dominated World
Shared CIO–CFO leadership sets the strategy for AI adoption, but the cloud architecture and data foundation you choose will determine how fast and safely you can execute it.
As finance systems migrate to the cloud, hyperscalers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are becoming the backbone of enterprise infrastructure. But with this convenience comes risk. Locking into a single provider can limit flexibility, inflate costs, and constrain innovation when new AI capabilities or regulatory requirements emerge.
For CFOs, having technology that is hyperscaler neutral isn’t just an IT preference, it’s a strategic safeguard. Neutrality means building architectures that avoid deep dependencies on one vendor, enabling organizations to pivot quickly as technology, pricing, and compliance landscapes shift. It also strengthens negotiating power, mitigates concentration risk, and ensures resilience in the face of geopolitical or regulatory disruptions.
Equally critical is your data foundation. The quality, structure, and accessibility of your data will determine whether AI delivers real value or stalls as an exceedingly costly experiment.
CFOs should work with CIOs to ensure that cloud platforms support open standards, robust APIs, and scalable data models. Because agility isn’t just about infrastructure; it’s about making data accessible and actionable across the enterprise. And agility isn’t just an IT advantage; it’s a financial one.
Trend #4: Geopolitical and Regulatory Complexity…Preparing for the Pendulum Swing
While CFOs collaborate with CIOs to accelerate AI-driven transformation, they can’t lose sight of another force shaping the future of finance: geopolitical and regulatory complexity. Take into consideration just a single example from 2025: the EU’s significantly loosened CSRD requirements. Now, only companies with 1,000+ employees and €50 million (approximately $55–57 million USD) in annual revenue are required to meet CSRD’s mandatory reporting requirements, removing nearly 80% of organizations that were previously in-scope. Compliance deadlines were also pushed back up to two years, and reporting standards were simplified, cutting mandatory data points by more than half.
For CFOs, this might feel like a reprieve, but that’s a risky illusion. Regulatory pendulums swing. Sustainability reporting remains a political priority in some geographic regions, and future tightening is inevitable. History shows that while progress toward transparency may ebb and flow, even periods of rollback rarely erase the underlying momentum. Over time, the trend continues. Organizations that scale back their ESG and compliance capabilities now will find themselves scrambling (and paying a premium) when stricter rules return.
The smarter play? Operationalize monitoring of the regulatory change, even in this period of relaxation. Why?
- In the long term, investor expectations aren’t loosening. Capital markets still demand transparency on ESG performance.
- Global frameworks are converging. CSRD may be easing up for now, but ISSB, and other regimes continue to advance.
- Future-proofing saves money. Building robust systems now avoids costly catch-up later.
CFOs should treat this moment not as an excuse to pause but as an opportunity to lead, ensuring their organizations stay ahead of the curve when the pendulum swings back.
Trend #5: Absorptive Capacity…The Secret Sauce for Thriving Through Transformation
If AI disruption and regulatory shifts have one thing in common, it’s unpredictability. The organizations that win aren’t those that forecast every change, they’re the ones that can absorb it, adapt, and turn it into advantage.
Enter absorptive capacity: an organization’s ability to identify valuable external knowledge, internalize it, and apply it for impact. In the era of Agentic AI, AI that can analyze, decide, and act autonomously, this capability is essential. But it’s equally critical for responding to regulatory swings, market shocks, and competitive disruption.
Organizations that exemplify absorptive capacity share five traits. They:
- Hire for adaptability, not just credentials. Curiosity and cognitive agility matter more than static technical skills.
- Build AI-literate teams. Everyone doesn’t need to code, but they must understand how AI works and how to challenge its outputs.
- Design roles for augmentation, not replacement. Humans handle complexity and creativity; AI handles the repeatable.
- Create learning ecosystems. Continuous learning beats one-off training: embed experimentation and peer knowledge-sharing into workflows.
- Empower expertise over hierarchy. If someone finds a better way to use AI for forecasting or compliance, let them lead, regardless of title.
Conclusion
The next era of finance won’t be defined just by faster closes or cleaner forecasts. It will be defined by intelligent workflows, shared leadership, adaptive architectures, resilient compliance, and teams built for continuous learning. Agentic AI is rewriting the rules of work, and the CIO-CFO partnership is the engine that will drive this transformation. But technology alone isn’t enough. CFOs must champion hyperscaler neutrality to preserve flexibility, build absorptive capacity to turn disruption into advantage, and operate at the higher end of regulatory complexity to stay ahead of the pendulum swing.
CFOs who lead boldly, by asking bigger questions, investing in future-proof systems, and embedding governance and adaptability into every decision, won’t just keep pace with change. They’ll set the pace. Those who hesitate risk being left behind in a world where finance isn’t just a function – it’s a strategic force shaping the enterprise of tomorrow.
Launching in early March: The Future-Ready CFO report. Reserve your complimentary copy today and get instant access as soon as it’s released.