AI for CPAs: From efficiency tool to decision engine

With each passing day, artificial intelligence continues to advance as a tool that can take care of busy work and free up finance professionals for higher-value work.

Increasingly, AI is also strengthening the judgment that CPAs are able to deliver.

AI has arrived, with 75% of senior finance leaders saying in a KPMG global survey that they’re actively using AI in the finance function after 30% said the same two years ago. In the next 18 months, according to a KPMG news release, 93% of U.S. companies will be deploying or scaling AI in their finance functions.

While using AI is becoming a given, how it’s been used is giving an edge to savvy finance professionals, based on findings from The Decision Advantage: How AI Is Producing Value Across the Finance Function.

“The conversation about AI in finance has changed. Two years ago, the question was whether AI could deliver. Today the question is what it should be deployed to do,” Sebastian Stöckle, global head of Audit Innovation & AI at KPMG International, said in the report. “The organizations getting it right are the ones using AI to sharpen judgment, not just speed up tasks. That is where the real return is.”

More than three-quarters of organizations (76%) represented in the survey are leveraging AI in financial planning. Seventy percent of leaders reported better decision-making quality over the last year; 71% reported faster decision-making capabilities; and 64% reported improved forecast accuracy.

Across those core finance metrics and three others (ROI, error reduction, close efficiency), organizations already deploying agentic AI showed a 32-point advantage in observing moderate or significant improvements in those metrics (76% vs. 44% among those not using agentic AI).

“The ultimate goal is not just automation, it’s elevation,” Thomas Mackenzie, KPMG US and Global Audit chief digital officer, said in the news release. “Leaders are harnessing sophisticated AI to create a finance function that is predictive instead of reactive.”

The real value of AI-related assurance readiness

While a recent Grant Thornton survey identified poor governance or compliance as a significant barrier to AI performance, the KPMG study quantified the potential impact of good governance.

While 60% of agentic AI leaders said their organizations are strongly “assurance-ready” — defined as able to “produce AI-related audit evidence efficiently and without disruption” — just 42% of all leaders in the survey said the same.

What’s the value of being assurance-ready? Across the six core finance metrics in the survey, organizations that can produce AI-related audit evidence reported significant improvement in each of those areas at a rate three to six times greater than organizations that weren’t yet assurance-ready.

“This moves the goalposts for our profession,” Christian Peo, KPMG US vice chair–Audit and Assurance, said in the news release. “To maintain trust in the capital markets, the auditor of the future will have to both audit financial statements and provide assurance over the AI systems that help produce them.”

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