Finance Leaders: Have You Designed Your 2030 Finance Function Yet?

Most finance leaders spend a lot of time thinking about the next quarter, and many are already planning for the next financial year. Far fewer spend enough time thinking about what their finance function should actually look like five years from now and, more specifically, what the organisation chart should look like once AI and automation become embedded in everyday operations.

That could be a costly oversight.
Few people can predict exactly what finance will look like in 2030, but it's difficult to find anyone who believes it will look exactly as it does today. The real question is not whether AI and automation will change finance. It's whether finance leaders are preparing their teams for that future now.

The Finance Function Is Approaching a Tipping Point

For decades, finance teams have been built around activities such as data gathering, reconciliations, report production, transaction processing, variance analysis and spreadsheet management. These activities remain essential, but they also consume a huge amount of time and capacity.

The challenge for finance leaders is that these are exactly the kinds of activities AI and automation are becoming increasingly capable of handling. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 86% of employers expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030, with automation continuing to accelerate the replacement of routine, process-driven activities.

In practical terms, much of what finance teams currently spend their time doing will either be automated, significantly streamlined or enhanced by technology.
That should excite finance leaders rather than concern them. The future of finance is not less important. If anything, it is becoming more important than ever.

Finance Is Moving From Scorekeeper to Strategic Partner

For years, finance has been trying to move closer to the business. Every CFO wants their team to be more commercial, more strategic and more influential. The challenge has often been capacity. When people spend most of their time producing information, there is little time left to interpret it, challenge it or use it to influence decision-making.

AI has the potential to change that equation. Deloitte's Future of Finance research suggests that by 2030, finance will need to evolve beyond transaction management and retrospective reporting, becoming a catalyst for business value creation through automation, augmented decision-making and closer collaboration between people and technology.

As a result, the finance professionals who thrive in the coming years are likely to spend less time producing numbers and more time challenging business performance, supporting strategic decisions, identifying opportunities and risks, scenario planning, advising operational leaders and driving continuous improvement.

Ironically, technology may be the very thing that finally allows finance to become what it has always aspired to be.

The Biggest Risk Isn't Technology

The biggest risk facing many organisations is not technology. It's organisational inertia.
Many finance teams are still structured for a world that is gradually disappearing. When somebody leaves, they are replaced like-for-like. When teams grow, responsibilities are added rather than redesigned. New technology is introduced, but the underlying processes often remain largely unchanged.

The result is that many organisations continue to build finance teams for today's challenges rather than tomorrow's opportunities.

If your ambition is for finance to become a genuinely strategic business partner over the next five years, that future vision should influence the decisions you're making today. Hiring, team structure, development priorities and investment choices should all be moving you towards the same destination.

Too often, they aren't.

Start With a Simple Question

If you were designing your finance team from scratch today, knowing what AI and automation are likely to be capable of by 2030, would it look the same?
For most organisations, the answer is probably no.

You would likely have fewer resources dedicated to manual processing and greater emphasis on data, systems and automation capability. You would probably strengthen commercial finance skills, increase business partnering capacity and build teams around insight and decision support rather than reporting production.

The challenge is that very few organisations ever stop and redesign from a blank sheet of paper. Instead, structures evolve incrementally over time. That approach worked well in the past, but it may not be enough for the future.

The Skills You Need Tomorrow Should Influence Hiring Today

One of the most interesting findings from Microsoft's and LinkedIn's Work Trend Index research is the growing value placed on AI capability in the workplace. Their research found that many leaders would prioritise AI skills when hiring, with some willing to hire less experienced candidates who demonstrate strong AI aptitude over more experienced candidates who do not.
That should be a wake-up call for finance leaders.

Technical competence will always matter, but it is increasingly important to look for qualities such as curiosity, adaptability, commercial thinking, technology awareness, a process improvement mindset and comfort with change.

These are the capabilities that will help finance professionals maximise the value of AI and automation rather than compete against it.

What Should Finance Leaders Do Now?

The good news is that nobody needs to wait until 2030 to act. There are practical steps leaders can take today.

Define your 2030 finance vision. Ask yourself: If automation handled 50% of our repetitive processes tomorrow, how would we want finance to spend its time? Build your future-state model first.

Audit where time is currently spent. Many leaders are surprised by how much capacity is consumed by low-value, manual activity. Understanding where time goes often highlights the biggest automation opportunities.

Rethink every vacancy. Every resignation should prompt the question: Do we need the same role again, or do we need a role that better supports our future direction?

Invest in capability, not just technology. Technology rarely delivers transformation on its own. People still drive outcomes, and capability development remains critical.
Start small. Not every organisation needs a major transformation programme. Some of the biggest gains come from automating repetitive tasks, creating capacity and allowing teams to gradually focus on higher-value activities.

The Finance Leaders Who Win Will Think Furthest Ahead

The history of finance is one of continuous evolution. ERP systems changed finance. Cloud technology changed finance. Data analytics changed finance. AI and automation will change finance too.

The organisations that benefit most over the next five years are unlikely to be those with the biggest technology budgets. More often, they will be the organisations that had the clearest view of where they wanted to go.

We've seen this firsthand with clients such as IMV Imaging. They have invested time in creating a clear vision for their future finance function, and that long-term thinking is helping shape decisions they make today around people, systems, processes and priorities. Rather than reacting to change as it happens, they're using a future-state vision to guide it.

Having a clear picture of the future finance function makes choices around people, technology and processes far easier and more aligned.

That's why one of the most valuable exercises any finance leader can undertake today isn't selecting software or launching a transformation programme. It's drawing the finance organisation chart they believe they'll need in 2030 and then working backwards from there.

Because once you know where you're heading, today's decisions become much easier to make.
At FIN, we help finance leaders think beyond today's challenges and build finance functions that are ready for the future. If you'd like to discuss how AI, automation, talent and team design could shape your finance function over the next 3-5 years, get in touch. We'd welcome the conversation.