Finance Leadership in the AI Era

AI in Finance: Separating Hype from Reality This is the first installment in my series “Financial Leadership in the AI Era.” If you’re new here, check out the introduction post to learn what this series is all about. The Current State of AI in Finance Departments Three weeks into my new role as a finance manager, I’ve been cataloging every vendor pitch that mentions AI, machine learning, or automation. The result? A spreadsheet with 23 different solutions, all promising to revolutionize our finance function through the power of artificial intelligence. ...

Building Your Finance Team’s AI Literacy This is the second installment in my series “Financial Leadership in the AI Era.” If you missed it, check out the previous post where we explored separating AI hype from reality in finance departments. The Literacy Gap in Finance Six weeks into my role as a finance manager, I’ve identified a significant challenge: the varying levels of AI literacy within our team. During a recent discussion about potentially implementing an AI-assisted forecasting tool, I noticed reactions ranging from unrealistic enthusiasm (“This will solve all our forecasting problems!”) to deep skepticism (“I don’t trust any black-box system”) to anxiety (“Will this replace my job?”). ...

Ethical Considerations in Financial AI This is the third installment in my series “Financial Leadership in the AI Era.” If you’re just joining, check out the first post on separating AI hype from reality and the second post on building your team’s AI literacy. When Algorithms Make Financial Decisions Three months into my role as a finance manager, my team faced our first significant ethical dilemma with AI implementation. We were evaluating a vendor’s AI solution for credit analysis that promised to increase approval rates while reducing default risk. The system showed impressive results in the demo, but when we dug deeper into how it made decisions, we discovered it was using postal codes as a significant factor—potentially serving as a proxy for demographic information that could lead to discriminatory outcomes. ...

Financial Leadership in the AI Era: A Journey of Discovery Welcome to my new blog series where I’ll be documenting my learning journey as a finance manager navigating the evolving landscape of AI in finance. Why This Series? I recently stepped into a new role as a finance manager. Like many professionals in finance today, I’m facing a rapidly changing environment where artificial intelligence is no longer just a buzzword but an increasingly important part of our toolkit. Rather than pretending to have all the answers, I’ve decided to learn in public and bring you along for the journey. ...