Creating a vision for the future
The Future of Finance starts now. With the right insight and skills, we can be prepared to harness the dynamism and unpredictability of our future careers.
We have created this briefing as part of an 18-month global research project, exploring the future progress of the finance profession and its role in the wider organisational ecosystem. Through interactions with finance leaders, academics, and students, we examined and investigated the ambit of finance in a rapidly changing world, highlighting critical factors and the proficiencies necessary to our evolution and advancement as a profession.
Our conversations revolved around transformations that will shape the future of finance. Thus, we explored our participants’ lived experiences with digitalisation, sustainability, and workplace innovation practices. In this report, AICPA® & CIMA®, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, aim to create a composite picture of the finance function of the future. With more than 698,000 members, students, and engaged professionals, living in 188 countries and territories, we are uniquely positioned to interact with global stakeholders to investigate, analyse, and document how the finance function is changing.
This comprehensive global research initiative brings together evidence from interviews, roundtables, and surveys to offer insight into the evolution of our role in organisations and society. Thus, it illustrates our view on how the finance profession will develop in the future and lead the way to improving organisations and their contributions.
This report is the second of the series and will focus on the many ways that technology is influencing the role of finance when it comes to automation, data, and infrastructure. It also addresses the skills that finance professionals need to remain relevant in the midst of the digital transformation.
Our 2019 white paper, ‘Re-inventing finance for a digital world’, found that, due to digitalisation, the finance function is shifting from focusing on organisational efficiencies and reducing costs to creating and preserving value in an environment of disruptive change.
This update to our Future of Finance research confirms that the accounting and finance profession has been on a continuous transformation journey. Businesses are becoming more global and competitive. The workforce is becoming more diverse and dispersed. Demands from customers, suppliers, regulators, employees, and other stakeholders are steadily increasing. The pace of technological advancements is contributing to a fast-moving and multifaceted world. These factors and others are leading to new business models, new mindsets, and new ways of working. The profession is transforming, and technology is paving the way for its future.
Today, more than ever, organisations are looking for ways to strengthen their digital capabilities by implementing new infrastructures, leveraging new technical tools, looking for innovative ideas, and capitalising on the vast amount of available data.
Our research has revealed that digital transformation is no longer about gaining a competitive advantage; it is necessary to drive value and, ultimately, to survive.
