ACCA Chief Financial Officer Summit: AI will replace 80% of accounting work, and financial value will shift toward professional judgment

Under the theme "Breaking Through with Value: CFOs' New Strategic Anchors Amid Cyclical Restructuring," the 22nd ACCA Chief Financial Officer Summit and the inaugural ACCA Value Creation Exemplar Awards ceremony were recently held in Shanghai. Attendees jointly explored how, in a macroeconomic environment of deepening artificial intelligence and intensifying global liquidity shifts, the accounting and finance profession and teams can achieve value breakthroughs, advance the integration of business and finance, and create real value for enterprise development and globalization. As the industry's first authoritative selection focused on comprehensive financial value creation, this year's ACCA Value Creation Exemplar Awards are highly professional, systematic and instructive for the industry. The selection formed four authoritative review perspective teams, covering academic experts, corporate CEOs, firm partners, and corporate finance and strategy CXOs, balancing academic professionalism, industrial practicality and industry-wide perspective. After three rounds of rigorous review, 24 benchmark enterprises combining solid strength and innovative practice were ultimately selected. At the forum, three judges were interviewed by our reporter; in their view, the finance teams of the winning enterprises not only possess solid financial strength, but also demonstrate how finance can provide better support and navigational arrangements for enterprises to navigate cycles. Not only solid financial strength, but also "bilingual capability" Yang Shujuan, Managing Partner of EY Beijing and ACCA Global Council member, said that from a financial perspective, whether CFOs or finance teams, they are all transforming from simple recorders of economic activity into builders of corporate value and industry value. The common characteristics of the talent in the winning enterprises' teams reveal the latest trend of accelerated transformation of the "finance" role. Among them, "composite capability" is one of the high-frequency terms mentioned by the interviewed experts. Yang Shujuan revealed that many winning teams integrate finance, data, industry and other talent together, and some teams have introduced AI trainers and data engineers to work alongside finance teams and finance experts. At the same time, these talents often possess "bilingual capability," that is, the ability to switch between business language and technical language. In particular, the finance heads of the winning teams need to use financial language, such as payback period assessment and valuation models, while also using technical language, including API interfaces, data governance architectures and AI algorithm logic. Cross-boundary capability is a key factor in business-finance integration. Wang Hua, former president of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, believes that today's finance talent needs to possess financial professional capability, technical application capability (especially data analysis) and strategic analysis capability. For individuals, this is a composite capability structure; for enterprises, what is needed is a composite team in which finance, technology and business collaborate. The interviewed experts also pointed out that although the finance department is an internal middle- and back-office department, it not only serves internally but is now accelerating to the front lines of company business and becoming a builder of the value network. Chen Hu, President of ZTE New Cloud and a senior ACCA member, said that although finance is often regarded as a back-office department, it is in fact also the enterprise's "sales": on the one hand, facing the capital market, market value management and information disclosure are essentially maintaining the enterprise's brand and value; on the other hand, facing the financing market—banks, securities, insurance and other institutions—the finance department, with an image of advanced technology and professional efficiency, wins recognition from these financial institutions for the enterprise, which itself has brand value. Under the AI wave, transformation opportunities lie in the 20% Under the current AI wave, finance positions face unprecedented challenges. Chen Hu said bluntly that the impact brought by AI is very great, and currently 80% of work in the accounting industry will be replaced. He explained specifically that the initial stage is "human + AI," that is, helping improve the efficiency of a single position; over time these tasks will be re-distilled to form individual Skills, and after connecting the Skills together, the replacement of position work can be achieved. "After 80% of existing finance work is replaced, the remaining 20% will face more non-deterministic problems—those truly important tasks requiring professional judgment will become increasingly prominent." Yang Shujuan said that everyone is currently discussing AI; AI will not replace finance people, but finance people who do not understand AI will be replaced by colleagues who do. This has become a consensus. "In the future, whether finance positions or management positions, more responsibility, judgment and creative work will be required." Chen Hu believes that new opportunities lie in the 20%. For example, tax planning, budget resource arrangements, internal company operations scheduling, as well as investment and financing decisions and major risk assessments—these tasks face the future and are full of uncertainty, and require professional judgment combined with corporate strategy and business reality. AI can assist analysis, but it is difficult for it to complete such trade-offs and decisions for people; these are precisely major opportunities for finance personnel. AI transformation and empowerment: the accounting profession gains new vitality AI not only brings profound impact on enterprise operations and the industry landscape, but also reconstructs the connotation and skill structure of the accounting profession. Wang Hua admitted frankly, "Our students are digital natives; their understanding of technical tools and information acquisition methods is often deeper than that of some teachers. If teachers still face today's students with the original knowledge-transmission approach, they will not only fail to keep up with the times but also find it difficult to win students' recognition. At the same time, we see that enterprises have strong AI application capabilities and fast implementation speed. If education continues to lag, talent will find it difficult to adapt to market and industry needs, so education reform is imperative." Regarding how to advance the reform, Wang Hua proposed that the key lies at two levels. First, improve teachers' AI literacy and application capabilities. School teacher development centers should continuously carry out AI skills training for teachers and promote teachers to master and apply AI technology; this is the foundational project of reform. Second, reconstruct the curriculum system with AI as the foundation; this is the more core issue. How to rebuild traditional courses in the AI era to meet students' future needs to serve enterprises and society is crucial. He further stated that in an AI environment, the form in which accounting exists may differ from the past, but accounting concepts and logic can fully penetrate into every link of enterprise operations, decision-making and investment through various means. The presentation forms of accounting vary greatly, but the logical core of recognition, measurement, recording and reporting always runs through the enterprise value chain. "Some people have considerable doubts about the future of the accounting profession; I think there is no need for that."