The finance roles most at risk from AI

As AI becomes more sentien—I mean, continues to change the basic functions of finance and accounting roles, some roles are likely to be more secure than others, recent research from Bain & Company found.

Bain’s survey of 102 senior finance executives in January and February found that the majority expected headcounts in tax, treasury, and investor relations subfunctions to remain steady over the next 12 months. But about half expected the impact of AI to reduce headcount in day-to-day, or transactional, finance, like accounting and period close, procure to pay, and invoice to cash, Bain Partner Michael Heric and Emilia Fallas, an EVP in the company’s corporate support practice, noted in the survey report.

Surprising or not? Research on projections of AI’s impact on overall headcount has predicted little effect so far. A JPMorgan survey of 1,500 CFOs and finance executives at US middle-market firms last November found that a majority (60%) thought AI would have no impact on overall headcount this year.

Similarly, in a study by Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond of more than 700 corporate executives surveyed between November 2025 and January 2026, respondents “reported a negligible impact from AI on employee headcounts in 2025, and the average impact on 2026 employment levels is also close to zero,” according to a commentary on the results.

Full speed ahead. Bain’s survey arrived as CFOs invest heavily in technology and AI; tax and accounting firm Grant Thornton is pouring $1 billion into those areas over the next few years. More than half (56%) of the Bain respondents said they were increasing enterprise-wide AI investment by more than 15% this year, and 83% planned budget increases of at least 15% over the next two years.

Early AI investments, though, according to Bain, have produced mixed results; only 31% of the CFO respondents rated AI outcomes in finance as “strongly positive.”

What do finance leaders want out of their AI investments? A plurality (43%) indicated “cost and efficiency” as a top objective, Bain reported. But nearly half (48%) of respondents said the actual benefit AI produced was not in cost and efficiency but in “speed and cycle time: doing the same work dramatically faster.”

“In an environment defined by shifting trade policy, volatile rates, and supply chain disruption, the finance function’s ability to reforecast quickly, reallocate capital on short notice, and surface risk in real time is a competitive advantage, not just an operational one,” Heric and Fallas wrote in the report.

“A finance function that compresses the cycle from market signal to management decision from weeks to days is better positioned to help the business move faster than its competitors.”*

So, are tax, treasury, and investor relations relatively safe? Maybe. But according to a recent report by Claude developer Anthropic, even highly skilled workers are exposed to potential replacement by AI in the long term.

*“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk plays in the distance