What happened
KPMG published this quantitative survey on 23 June 2026, drawing on 1,013 senior finance leaders across 20 countries and 13 sectors to assess how AI is being deployed, measured, and governed within the finance function. The headline finding: active AI use in finance has more than doubled since 2024, rising from 30% to 75%, yet only 23% of organisations report outcomes that exceed expectations. The decisive differentiator is 'assurance readiness' — organisations able to produce audit evidence and explain AI decisions report three to six times higher rates of error reduction (33% vs. 6%) and are nearly three times more confident in scaling AI (42% vs. 14%). A stark sector gap persists: 71% of banking leaders report improved forecast accuracy vs. only 44% in healthcare, driven by data-foundation differences. The biggest barrier is data quality, cited by 36% as both their top obstacle and opportunity.
Why it matters
CFOs and audit committees face a concrete, benchmarked performance gap: governance and auditability of AI are now directly measurable drivers of financial-function ROI, not just compliance overhead — and regulators are beginning to demand proof. Finance leaders who cannot demonstrate assurance-readiness risk both regulatory scrutiny and competitive disadvantage as the majority of peers scale AI aggressively.
Action needed
CFO and audit committee should benchmark the organisation's AI assurance-readiness posture against the 42% 'fully ready' threshold and commission a gap assessment covering audit trails, explainability, and error-tracking for all AI-enabled finance processes.