Agentic AI is handling more finance work — but can CFOs trust it?

By definition, agentic artificial intelligence can execute complex tasks with little to no human oversight.

That’s not what middle-market CFOs are seeing when it comes to agentic AI’s current role in accounting and finance processes, according to a survey that confirms the continued importance of people in the process.

Two-thirds of the 100 CFOs at companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $500 million surveyed for technology company Maximor’s Finance AI Adoption Benchmarking Report said human oversight of agentic AI in the finance function is extremely or very critical to ensuring accuracy. Another 30% said it was somewhat critical, with just 3% saying it’s not too critical or not critical at all.

“Human oversight is not resistance. It is responsible adoption,” the report said. “CFOs want automation that knows when to act and when to pause for judgment.”

Nearly four of five CFOs (79%) said that at least 25% of their accounting and finance workload is being handled by agentic AI tools, with 28% of CFOs reporting that at least half is handled by agentic AI.

More than half mostly trust (41%) or completely trust (14%) AI to deliver accurate data, and 45% trust AI somewhat or slightly.

The large majority (86%) said their finance team has encountered inaccurate or hallucinated data while using AI for finance tasks.

“Finance leaders will trust AI when they can audit it,” the report said. “Verifiable, traceable, and explainable outputs are non-negotiable in high-scrutiny environments.”

Human oversight of AI outputs is a necessary step in the evolution of emerging technologies. Ideally, it won’t be an overly time-consuming task as AI accuracy continues to improve. While a recent global survey of leaders and employees found that nearly 40% of AI’s promised productivity is lost to rework, 96% of CFOs in the Maximor report either somewhat or strongly agreed that the biggest benefit of AI is that it allows for more time for strategic work.

But currently, just 27% of the CFOs said they’re spending at least half of their time on strategic planning while 69% are spending at least half their time on day-to-day operations.

“Strategy stalls when data is doubted,” the report said. “Without confidence in the numbers, even the best CFO insights struggle to translate into action.”

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com.