One of the five agendas that the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) identified for finance professionals to create a a better, fairer, and more sustainable world is the importance of understanding the benefits of artificial intelligence in the accountancy profession.
The global professional accounting body says that while AI presents some significant societal and environmental threats, it is also potentially a huge force for good.
The ways in which AI can be used include powerful business use cases such as automating basic customer service transactions through to monitoring risk and boosting cyber resilience.
Professional accountants thereby are well placed to help their respective organisations to understand and capitalise on the benefits of AI adoption to support the business case for investment.
AI tools
As part of this process, finance professionals can ensure that any AI tools adopted have a valid business use and can genuinely benefit the company’s stakeholders, helping them further the journey towards a better, fairer and more sustainable world.
Accountants can also deploy AI tools that specifically boost their own productivity as a finance professional.
AI tools at present are already being used to automate a range of standard finance processes, such as data entry and invoice processing. Meanwhile, within audit, they are being used to analyse entire datasets, enabling auditors to move away from the traditional ‘sampling’ process.
Generative AI
To date, however, ACCA says they have only seen the start of what AI is capable of; the rise of generative AI is about to unleash a wealth of new opportunities.
Going forward, generative AI tools should enable finance professionals to automate the report generation process, conduct enhanced risk assessments, undertake scenario modelling, and make use of predictive analytics that can inform business decision making.
ACCA says AI will only be a force for good if it is used in a responsible way.
Finance professionals can work with their organisations' technology teams, as well as other teams that are using AI models, to ensure the technologies are being used ethically and effectively and that they do not cause or exacerbate bias and discrimination.
