The tech trends finance teams need to know about

When it comes to finance, 2023 is all about embracing tech to improve efficiency. Particularly given the unstable economy that’s showing no signs of letting up. Whether you’re harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to build a customer-friendly chatbot for your website or hiring a talented team of engineers to focus on cybersecurity, we’re sharing the hottest tech trends to tap into. Keep reading to find out which technologies your finance team should be championing to make the most of your company’s money.

1. AI is upping the ante

While artificial intelligence hasn’t completely transformed the financial sector yet, it’s definitely changing the way people interact with money. The power of AI is giving finance and banking companies fresh ways to help customers access, spend and invest their cash.

But it’s not just having an impact from a customer-facing perspective. Some finance leaders are harnessing AI to crunch data and forecast trends, from supply chain costs to consumer buying habits, helping them better prepare for the future. In fact, the market value of AI in finance is expected to grow 16.5% by 2030 .

As AI hasn’t been fully adopted yet, the solutions that actually provide value are still quite narrow. This is because for an AI product to function the way you want it to, it needs to see millions of examples of what it’s trying to predict. Overall, there are four key areas CFOs should consider using AI for in the coming months and years:

• Personalising services and products
• Managing risk and fraud
• Enabling transparency and compliance
• Automating operations and reducing costs

There are endless examples of areas where AI can improve the outcome for finance teams and their customers. For example, anomaly detection. Using AI can help banks detect anomalies, like fraudulent transactions, financial crime and cyber threats, to keep their platform clean.

Similarly, these banks can use AI to provide personalised recommendations for financial products and services (like investment advice or limited-time offers) based on customer journeys and financial goals.

According to Microsoft , AI is the perfect partner to help finance teams work smarter, not harder, with 82% of finance leaders agreeing that AI is key to helping their team support their organisation’s goals. Which leads us nicely onto tech trend #2…

2. People and tech go hand in hand

Harnessing technology to improve financial performance is more important than ever. But, crucially, this shouldn’t be at the expense of your people. It’s not a case of replacing one with the other. No matter how much money companies throw at transformative technology, they still need people to manage and analyse the data – this will continue to be a focus for finance teams in 2023.

In fact, one of the benefits of finding the right tech for your company is that it frees up time for your employees to focus on more valuable work. At Pleo, we’re all about automating financial admin to free up your CFO to become a strategic partner. This way, they can offer leadership the necessary insights to decide in which direction to steer the business. The right software should empower your people, not overshadow them.

A priority for many finance leaders will be hiring (and maintaining) a team that’s able to adapt to new technologies and collaborate to get the most out of them. Thanks to a talent shortage and digital skills gap , both established finance companies and fintechs are struggling to place the right people into their teams.

Here are some tips on how to attract the best finance talent if you’re on the hunt for new employees.