As many as 93 percent of finance professionals globally are concerned about the integrity and verifiability of AI-generated insights, according to a survey.
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) emphasized the figures in its “Enabling finance insight: Bridging skills and data gaps for AI-enabled finance” report.
The report, featuring responses of 1,600 finance professionals, elaborated that 93 percent of respondents showed at least a moderate level of concern, including 67 percent noted a high level of concern.
Respondents stressed issues of AI hallucinations, inaccuracies, incomplete data sets, lack of transparency, and bias.
Finance professional “will have to deal with hallucinations and inaccuracies-there’s a big role for accountants to help create some guardrails to validate what information has been produced from the data,” the report emphasized.
Another finding is that generative AI ranks as the single most critical future skill among finance professionals in Southeast Asia, yet 72 percent of respondents globally report only basic or no GenAI proficiency.
As many as 39 percent of Southeast Asia respondents named GenAI tools as a top-three critical skill for the next five years, the highest-ranked capability in the region.
This was followed by data visualisation at 34 percent, process automation at 29 percent, data storytelling and executive communication at 27 percent, real-time dashboard creation and monitoring at 25 percent, and predictive analytics at 24 percent.
Despite the priority placed on GenAI, proficiency and formal training lag behind, with 41 percent of respondents seeking training and upskilling in their own time.
Globally, strategic priorities at 45 percent and regulatory requirements at 43 percent were cited as the key drivers of increased data analysis. The main obstacles to improving business insights were data quality issues and lack of appropriate skills, each cited by 42 percent of respondents, followed by difficulty integrating multiple data sources at 40 percent.
Ainslie van Onselen, CEO of CA ANZ, said AI is now a core part of the finance toolkit but should be used to sharpen judgement rather than simply accelerate existing processes. Structured learning and closer collaboration with IT and data teams are necessary to manage risk, the executive elaborated.