CFOs taking on more AI oversight, says Deloitte

Chief financial officers and finance leaders are increasingly taking the lead on AI projects with a focus on capital allocation, governance and cost controls, according to a Deloitte report.

In Deloitte's Finance Trends 2027 Report, the firm found the following:

• 54% of finance leaders are overseeing cross-enterprise AI and technology capital allocation.
• 48% of finance leaders are focusing on AI trust and reliable outputs.
• 48% of finance leaders control oversight of AI, technology spending and cost controls.
• 77% of finance leaders said they're comfortable with agentic AI moving to autonomous decision-making but only 14% wanted fully autonomous agents for more critical decisions.
• 55% of respondents require some level of human oversight to be comfortable deploying AI agents in finance.
• 42% said their ambitions exceed current AI capabilities because they need controls before scaling.
• 36% view the primary return on AI to be productivity with 23% citing revenue enablement.
• 63% cite sovereignty as a strategic differentiator.

And among those respondents taking on AI responsibilities, two third of finance leaders have done so in the past three years. Deloitte's survey had 1,434 respondents.

Given the AI budget shocks it's not surprising that CFOs and finance leaders have expanded roles. Enterprises need to see return on investment from AI projects.

Finance leaders are primarily focused on three areas for AI spending.

• 48% of respondents said providing real-time data and insights to the business was the top priority.
• 36% said AI can help the enterprise respond to external market shifts.
• 34% said the priority was rapidly relocating capital.

To strengthen data and technology foundations, 46% of respondents said they planned to invest in modernizing enterprise resource planning platforms or unifying financial management systems. These respondents see AI as financial orchestration layer.

Forty-three percent of respondents wanted to use AI to rewire how work is completed in finance and a third wanted more dynamic forecasting and insights.

At the beginning of 2026, CEOs were often taking the lead in driving enterprise AI top down. Deloitte's latest survey seems to indicate that blown budgets are driving AI to the CFO's office.