🚨 CFOs See Promise in AI Agents Yet Fear Critical Decision Risk

Only 40% are Comfortable Letting AI Agents Handle Financial Decisions

Author

Vanessa Carter
August 28, 2025

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Hey there, CFOs! 💼

In this issue, we highlight how AI agents in the workplace are creating both excitement and hesitation. Workday’s research shows that while most employees welcome AI as a teammate, far fewer are comfortable with AI in a supervisory role.

📰 Upcoming in this issue

  • 🤖 AI Agents Stir Excitement - and Nerves - for Finance Leaders

  • 🤝 Trust, Transparency, and AI: Renaud Dumora’s Vision

  • 🤖 Sage’s Agentic AI Puts Trust at the Core

🤖 AI Agents Stir Excitement - and Nerves - for Finance Leaders

Workday spotlights how autonomous agents promise speed and savings, yet CFOs worry about control, accuracy, and accountability when machines start taking actions.

Key Takeaways:

  • 📈 Adoption Sentiment Is Mixed: Finance leaders express anticipation, skepticism, and fear, balancing competitive pressure with caution around agentic decision-making.

  • 🧪 Pilot Before Scale: Teams test narrow, high-value workflows first, validating outcomes and failure modes before expanding to complex processes.

  • 🔐 Controls Come First: Policies, permissions, audit trails, and security reviews establish accountability and prevent unauthorized transactions or data leakage.

  • 👥 Humans Stay In The Loop: CFOs retain oversight, requiring human approvals for sensitive steps and clear escalation paths when agents encounter uncertainty.

🤝 Trust, Transparency, and AI: Renaud Dumora’s Vision

BNP Paribas executive Renaud Dumora outlines how finance can deploy AI customers actually trust. He spotlights explainability, data governance, and human accountability.

Key Takeaways:

  • 🔍 Explainable By Design: Models provide understandable reasons for outcomes, with documented data lineage and clear criteria for approvals or declines.

  • 👤 Human Oversight: People remain accountable, review edge cases, and set guardrails so AI assists decisions rather than replaces them.

  • 🔐 Data Sovereignty And Security: Privacy by design, regulated hosting, and stringent third-party controls protect sensitive data and reduce systemic risk.

  • 🌱 Responsible Value Creation: AI targets real customer benefits, from fraud reduction to smarter credit and sustainable finance, with measurable, auditable impact.

🤖 Sage’s Agentic AI Puts Trust at the Core

Sage’s CTO Aaron Harris explains how agentic AI turns finance tools into autonomous teammates. The firm debuts an AI Trust Label and highlights a market poised to grow from $5B to $47B by 2030.

Key Takeaways:

  • 🔍 Trust Label Debuts: Sage introduces an AI Trust Label that explains data protection, bias mitigation, and safeguards, aligning with NIST and UK guidance.

  • 🧠 Purpose-Built Models: Sage trains LLMs on product-specific data so agents understand workflows and augment accountants rather than replace them.

  • ⚙️ Agentic Use Cases: Agents accelerate monthly close, process invoices, and streamline reconciliation, managing multi-step workflows with minimal supervision.

  • 📈 Market Momentum: Agentic AI is projected to grow from $5 billion today to $47 billion by 2030, signaling fast enterprise adoption.

Why It Matters

For CFOs, AI adoption is not just a technology choice, it is a leadership decision. Finance leaders must balance the productivity gains AI agents deliver with the need to preserve employee trust and set clear boundaries around machine roles.

Those who strike the right balance will unlock efficiency without undermining culture.

Vanessa Carter
Editor-in-Chief
CFO Executive Insights

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