Date: 04 February 2026 Location: Macildowie, Nottingham
We hosted our first CFO roundtable of the year in collaboration with Macildowie, bringing together a group of senior finance leaders for a conversation that felt refreshingly honest and grounded in reality. There were no dramatic predictions about AI taking over the world, and no pressure to chase the latest tool. Instead, the focus was squarely on a question that many boards are currently grappling with: how do we actually generate meaningful AI ROI in finance without creating unnecessary risk, wasted investment, or a trail of disconnected pilot projects?
What became clear very quickly is that the conversation has evolved. A year ago, leaders were still trying to understand where AI might fit within their organisations. Now, the tone is different. CFOs know that AI matters, but they are asking tougher, more commercial questions about governance, accountability, and measurable return. The curiosity phase is giving way to scrutiny.
The Conversation Has Shifted: From Curiosity to Commercial Accountability
One of the most consistent themes throughout the session was that if you begin with the question, “Which AI tool should we buy?”, you are almost certainly starting in the wrong place. The more productive starting point is to ask what problem you are trying to solve, and how AI might help you solve that problem better, faster, or more intelligently than before. Most finance functions are still spending a significant proportion of their time forecasting, reconciling, reporting, and explaining numbers to the wider business. AI can undoubtedly remove a meaningful portion of that manual effort, but saving time alone does not automatically translate into return on investment.
Efficiency Doesn’t Equal ROI – Leadership Does
This is where the discussion became more interesting. When automation creates capacity within a team, whether that is ten percent or thirty percent, leadership then faces a set of deliberate choices. That capacity can be used to reduce cost, slow hiring, reinvest in higher-value analysis, or reshape the role finance plays within the organisation. Efficiency creates opportunity, but AI ROI in finance is only realised when leaders actively decide how that opportunity will be used. Measuring hours saved is straightforward; deciding what those hours now represent for the future of the function is the harder part.
AI Is Reshaping the Finance Talent Model
We also explored how automation inevitably reshapes the structure of finance teams. Transactional work has traditionally acted as the apprenticeship layer through which junior professionals build experience and commercial understanding. If AI begins to absorb part of that layer, organisations will need to rethink how capability is developed and how future leaders are formed. This is not an argument against automation – far from it – but it is a reminder that transformation requires intentional design. AI is not simply improving workflows; it is subtly altering the talent pyramid, and leaders who recognise that early will be better positioned to adapt.
Governance, Trust and the Foundations of AI ROI
Unsurprisingly, governance and trust featured heavily in the discussion. CFOs are right to be cautious about data quality, security, and the risk of inaccurate outputs. There was a shared view that AI cannot be treated as a standalone IT initiative or a side strategy that sits adjacent to the core business plan. If AI is to deliver sustained ROI in finance, it must be owned at leadership level, connected to strategic goals, and built on solid data foundations. While quick wins are possible, and in many cases desirable to build confidence and momentum, those wins need to sit within a coherent transformation roadmap rather than exist as isolated experiments.
From AI Projects to Finance Transformation
Perhaps the strongest takeaway from the roundtable was that AI should not be viewed as a project with a beginning and an end. It is better understood as a capability layer that, when properly harnessed, can enhance forecasting, shared services, reporting, and commercial planning across the entire operating model. The organisations most likely to achieve meaningful AI ROI in finance will not be those running scattered pilots, but those aligning process, data, people, governance, and leadership accountability around a long-term transformation agenda.
Continuing the AI ROI Conversation
We are grateful to Macildowie for partnering with us on this session and to the CFOs who contributed so openly to the conversation. If you are currently building a business case for AI in your finance function and want to ensure that it is grounded in commercial value rather than experimentation, we would welcome the opportunity to continue that discussion. Because ultimately, AI is not about adopting new software, it is about reshaping how value is created within the finance function and across the business as a whole.
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