UK finance roles demand AI experience as skills lag

FD Recruit says 80% of its live finance director and chief financial officer vacancies now require practical AI experience. Yet only about one in 10 senior finance candidates in its survey could demonstrate that experience.

The finding points to a widening mismatch in UK finance hiring as boards add AI use to the standard requirements for senior finance roles. Phil Scott, Managing Director of FD Recruit, said the shift has gone from a minor consideration to an almost core part of many briefs in less than a year.

Employers still want technical accounting knowledge, commercial judgement and leadership. But many now also expect candidates to show they have used AI within a finance function and taken responsibility for the results. FD Recruit, which interviews more than 5,000 finance professionals a year, said the pattern is now visible across most of its active searches.

The shortage appears to reflect slower AI adoption in finance than in other corporate functions. Sales and marketing teams have adopted AI tools more quickly for tasks such as content production, outreach and data work. Finance teams, by contrast, have moved more cautiously because of concerns about accuracy, security and control.

Scott said employers have become more specific about the experience they want. "Many employers no longer treat AI as an extra line on a CV, because they want someone who has done the work and owned the result," he said.

He added that the market for proven users remains thin. "We can fill a room with finance leaders who are interested in AI, but a much smaller one with those who have implemented it and taken responsibility for the output. Some clients now want that second group, and at the moment there are simply not enough of them to go round," Scott said.

Skills gap

The recruiter's survey covered more than 200 finance professionals. It found that only around one in 10 had substantially used AI beyond basic use of large language models to analyse reports or draft commentary.

The gap broadly aligns with wider research on the changing shape of finance work. Deloitte's Finance Trends 2026 found that 64% of finance leaders plan to prioritise AI, automation and data analysis skills over traditional ones across their teams. A Chartered Management report cited by FD Recruit found that 64% of senior leaders encourage staff to experiment with AI, while only 13% of managers say those leaders are using and testing the tools themselves.

The result is a hiring market where demand for applied experience is outpacing supply. Recruiters and employers increasingly want not general enthusiasm about AI, but examples of projects already run in reporting, analysis or other finance processes.

Cautious adoption

Finance teams have particular reasons to move carefully. In functions answerable to auditors and regulators, mistakes in data handling or reporting carry heavier consequences than in many other departments. Senior finance staff also face questions about where information entered into AI tools is stored, who can access it and whether the output can be relied on in formal reporting.

Those concerns are not stopping adoption outright, but they are shaping the order in which finance teams test the technology. Early use has tended to stay in lower-risk work, with tighter checks before outputs are used in decision-making.

Scott described the approach as gaining the most traction among early adopters.

"The most successful early implementations tend to start where the risk is contained, such as reporting, while staying away from the general ledger or anything needing an audit trail until trust is established. The finance teams gaining the most ground are also treating prompt and context design as a finance skill in its own right, rather than handing it to IT, and are putting basic controls such as logging and access management in place before scaling anything up," he said.

FD Recruit also pointed to a recent online session for finance directors and chief financial officers already using AI in their teams, in which only a small number of attendees had projects to present. Even among those further ahead in adoption, the firm said, there was broad agreement that AI output still needs close checking because plausible answers are not always correct.

That leaves employers in a difficult position as they try to modernise finance leadership while limiting risk. Boards want senior finance figures who can judge where AI is useful, where it is unsafe and how controls should be applied, but the pool of candidates who have already done that work remains limited.

FD Recruit said the gap is becoming a defining issue in senior finance recruitment, as companies seek leaders who can integrate AI into finance without weakening oversight.