Artificial intelligence may be all the rage, but it still ranks behind data security and several core traditional finance activities on CFO priority lists.

For the third consecutive year, the security and privacy of data was singled out as the top corporate finance focus in Protiviti’s annual survey on global finance trends.

Rating finance responsibilities on a 1-10 scale with 10 reflecting the highest priority, the 902 respondents to this year’s survey gave data security an aggregate score of 7.6.

AI ranked sixth on the list at 6.9, placing it also behind enhanced data analytics, process improvement and strategic planning.

It’s on a pronounced upward path, though, as AI had ranked 13th in the consulting firm’s 2025 survey. Additionally, Protiviti’s survey report pointed out that AI is likely a contributing factor in data security’s continuing lead status among finance priorities.

Still, according to the report, the data suggests that at present AI is enhancing traditional finance processes, rather than reshaping the function.

In fact, finance organizations appear to be better at measuring ROI from business transformations than from AI programs: 35% of survey respondents indicated they are at least moderately effective in measuring AI’s ROI, compared with 45% for business-transformation initiatives. “This suggests that many organizations may be investing in AI without clear visibility into the actual, required or expected returns,” Protiviti wrote.

Only 1% of the surveyed professionals said AI is driving significant business transformation in the finance organization.

However, most companies seemingly don’t consider themselves much better at gauging the ROI of business transformations than they are at doing so for AI.

Among finance organizations that are employing AI, 76% said they are using it for financial forecasting, followed by risk assessment and management (67%), process automation (56%), compliance and regulatory reporting (50%), scenario planning (44%), expense management (42%) and cash flow management (40%).

Protiviti listed several calls to action for finance leaders to further enhance cost optimization and efficiency. They included:

• Continue to lean on proven automation and technology tools: “Continue investing in process transformation, automation, technology rationalization and cloud-based systems ... while implementing and scaling AI where it strengthens those efforts.”
• Employ advanced analytics to reveal where value is being created and lost: “Building stronger spend, profitability and performance analytics will enable finance teams to illuminate for business leaders critical margin drivers by segment, customer and market.”
• Strengthen the data foundation for automation and AI: “Improve data quality, governance, integration and access to drive quality outputs from analytics, automation and AI tools.”
• Automate high-volume, routine, and rules-based finance activities: “Assess opportunities to employ automation and AI for financial close, reconciliation, reporting, expense management, invoice processing and compliance workflows.”
• Rationalize the finance technology portfolio: “Assess the ROI implications of overlapping tools, underused licenses, fragmented workflows and manual workarounds across the finance organization and, in partnership with IT, the broader enterprise.”