The job of the chief financial officer typically shifts in step with the macro environment. In yesteryear’s era, defined by cheap money, globalized supply chains and predictable demand curves, financial leadership was largely about squeezing inefficiencies out of a system designed to scale. The name...
For years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been pitched to finance leaders as a faster way to do what they already do: close the books, reconcile accounts, forecast cash, and manage risk. But as CFOs look to move AI from pilots to production across their department...
The CFO’s mandate has traditionally been to optimize within existing systems. Finance chiefs manage costs, allocate capital, forecast with increasing precision and ensure their company delivers predictable performance quarter after quarter. That foundation has shifted. Trade tensions, tariffs, geopolitical realignment, persistent inflation, supply chain fragility,...
The 2025 story of the office of the CFO was not one about finance becoming more powerful or automated, much less agentic. What happened during 2025 was that the finance function’s core mandate around controllership and a steady hand on the balance sheet became more...
The story of enterprise transformation in 2025 wasn’t just about technology but about who was making the decisions. Not all companies are moving at the same speed or with the same mindset. The data-backed archetypes that PYMNTS Intelligence uncovered throughout 2025 include Adaptive CFOs to...
A new PYMNTS Intelligence report shows that tariffs are no longer a temporary policy shift. They are now a structural force shaping how America’s middle-market CFOs rethink investment, budgeting and growth plans for 2026. “Revising the Roadmap: How Tariffs Are Transforming CFOs’ Strategic Planning” analyzes...
CFOs are getting tired of managing for surprises. They want to manage for strategy, instead. But there is a foundational problem hidden beneath this expanding mandate. Most finance teams still lack continuous, trustworthy visibility into accounts payable, cash flow and the operational signals that shape...
Treasury is quickly becoming the nerve center of finance with decisions that influence not just liquidity, but enterprise risk appetite, growth strategy, and digital transformation. Behind this shift are the three foundational pillars of AI, cyber defense and payments optimization. The momentum behind each represents...
For decades, the title of chief financial officer evoked an image of someone buried in spreadsheets and focused on quarterly closes, regulatory compliance and carefully hedged projections. Today, however, trade volatility has gone from exception to norm, and traditional Excel-based forecasting no longer suffices. “If...