Good morning. CFO confidence is on the upswing as 2026 begins, and digital transformation in finance has overtaken enterprise risk management as the top goal for the year ahead.
That’s a key finding of Deloitte’s latest CFO Signals Spotlight report, released this morning. Half of the finance chiefs surveyed named digital transformation as their foremost priority for 2026, followed by cash management optimization and capital allocation. The findings are based on a recent Q4 survey of 200 CFOs across industries at North American companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue.
Steve Gallucci, global and U.S. leader of Deloitte’s CFO Program, told me the shift reflects how finance leaders are moving from exploration to execution when it comes to technology—particularly AI.
“Efficiency and productivity are certainly part of the equation,” Gallucci said. “But more broadly, we’ve been on this digital evolution for some time.”
In recent years, as advanced technologies like agentic AI burst onto the scene, boards and C-suite leaders have shown increasing interest. Finance chiefs took a cautious approach to implementing these tools. Deloitte’s Finance Trends report finds that finance leaders are now influencing enterprise strategy, driving cost optimization, advancing digital transformation, and building tech-enabled teams.
