Market Insights

Is your organisation in serious need of a finance dream team? Finance is changing, becoming more tied to tech, Big Data analysis, and automation. Sadly, while exciting new talent is arriving on the scene, there is a significant gap between finance teams that are fully conversant in the latest technological advances and what organisations desperately need.

Step one: technology

The right people can deliver radically superior results, and keep you operating at maximum returns. How do you identify the best people to create a strong finance department? A blend of financial and tech savvy is key, and you don’t just need people – you need tools.

According to a recent Deloitte survey, artificial intelligence (AI) for finance is what frontrunners who succeed have committed to. There are three main areas you need to look at and invest in before assembling your finance dream team.

Machine learning (ML)

Seventy per cent of all financial services respondents were using machine learning, for one or more of the following functions:

• Predicting cash-flow events.
• Proactively advising customers on spending and saving habits.
• Building advanced credit models.
• Detecting fraud by spotting patterns in transactional data.

Natural language processing (NLP)

Sixty per cent of all financial services respondents were using NLP, for one or more of the following functions:
Reading documents and identifying errors in information verification or user identification.

• Improving the underwriting process.
• Understanding customer queries via voice.

Deep learning

More than half of all financial services respondents said they were using deep learning, for one or more of the following functions:

• Reading claims documents and ranking them for prioritised attention.
• Building user dashboards for simple and intuitive data analytics.
• Developing innovative trading and investment strategies.

Identifying where you can use ML, NLP, and deep learning is the starting point. From there, you can seek the right candidates to form the human side of your finance dream team.

Step two: people

In order to succeed, it is crucial to have an agile, competent team that is capable of integrating with the latest technology, and not averse to continually working to build new skills. As finance departments play an increasingly strategic role inside their organisations, and automation is entering the field, it’s vital to find candidates who can think beyond the spreadsheet.

Cultivate technical fluency in your teams by committing to a solid onboarding and training process, and providing each team member with the best tools possible. AI and ML are aids for their human counterparts, not replacements. Your finance dream team needs to be half human and half AI to keep you competitive.

Risk management



By integrating risk professionals into your company’s transformation processes, you introduce massive benefits for the long-term. Find people who can implement these tools for fraud detection, forecasting and prediction of cashflows and revenues, process automation and full-scale audits. By enhancing your employees’ talents with the capability to spot patterns in enormous data sets, you empower them to do their job twice as well.