What Keeps CFOs Up at Night—And 10 Actions to Drive Growth

Where do CFOs see the biggest growth opportunities for their organizations?

Finance leaders have an optimistic outlook on revenue growth and ecosystem partnership expansion. For both, the foundation of success lies in finance-developed data.

Today’s CFO is viewed as the organization’s primary provider of both financial and non-financial data. The data-driven insights provided by the finance team enable enterprises to drive revenue growth along with ecosystem development, including strategic alliances and partnerships that will accelerate transformational AI and other technology deployments and drive efforts to enter new markets and geographies.

Strategic alliances and partnerships, although potentially beneficial to both parties, can be difficult to negotiate. While preferred supplier agreements are relatively straightforward, complex joint ventures can introduce complex financial, accounting and economic considerations. Relationships with all third parties should be subject to the appropriate level of due diligence and continuous monitoring on cybersecurity, data privacy, financial performance and reporting, and more. With mandatory reporting obligations regarding ecosystem development and geographic expansion activities, CFOs must ensure that their C-suite colleagues and boards understand the economics and Funding under these arrangements.

What are the organization’s most significant AI-related challenges?

In addition to integrating AI within the enterprise and preparing the workforce to understand the value proposition of AI, CFOs also see managing data-related cybersecurity risks as the biggest AI challenges.

These challenges are strategic in nature (keeping pace with competitors), value oriented (measuring and maximizing returns on AI investments) and risk focused (AI-related data privacy and cybersecurity risks) – much like the nature of the CFO’s role. They also outline the AI ​​mandate for CFOs, namely to lead the rapid deployment of AI to remain competitive in the market and to strike the right balance between achieving the return on investment (ROI) promised by providers and expected by key stakeholders while avoiding the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Additionally, as AI adoption progresses, CFOs should strengthen third-party risk oversight on AI tools – ensuring vendors can operate responsibly and securely in an AI-enabled ecosystem – while also investing in the foundational capabilities that drive ROI, including modern technology and a workforce equipped to deploy, use, and collaborate with AI.

What are the most important short-term risk concerns for the CFO?

Finance leaders view overall economic concerns, changes in global markets and unpredictable trade policies, cyber threats and third-party risks among their biggest near-term risks.

Driven by persistent inflation, uncertain interest rates, fluctuations in energy markets, and intensifying regional conflicts, as well as unpredictable global trade policies, economic instability tops their list – this is no surprise given the current uncertainty in the geopolitical landscape. Attention, data from Protivi Latest Global Survey of CFOs indicates that approximately three-fifths of finance leaders report significant impacts from trade policy uncertainty on forecast accuracy, reporting requirements, and profitability.

Cyber ​​threats, and by extension third party risks, continue to capture the attention of CFOs. On the cyber front, third parties as well as fourth and third parties remain significant risks, especially due to increasing data volumes with increasing AI adoption. Furthermore, recent high-profile attacks are evidence that bad actors continue to target large, multinational suppliers, whose outages cause maximum financial damage to their broad customer base.

More broadly, potential third-party issues arise from the use of AI by vendors – in particular, the risks posed to the organization’s customers and clients. This requires integrating AI use into vendor due diligence, sourcing, onboarding and monitoring activities. Furthermore, amid the current economic instability, CFOs must ensure that the financial performance and health of strategic suppliers is strictly monitored.

In which areas is the organization most likely to invest in the next two to three years?

Not surprisingly, investment priorities for CFOs align with their near-term risk concerns, with supply chain management, business process improvement and infrastructure modernization topping the list.

For these areas, as with other investment allocations such as cybersecurity, CFOs focus on ensuring they reflect the organization’s broader priorities and, equally important, make fiscal sense. This makes sense as investment hurdle rates and internal return limits are increasing in the corporate environment. Risk-free rates are rising. Private equity, venture capital and other investors are expecting increasingly tight hurdle rates. Thus, as the range of acceptable returns in the business case expands to reflect these realities as well as economic uncertainty, capital discipline increases.

10 actions to achieve strategic growth objectives while addressing risks

Based on the study’s findings, we can recommend that CFOs take the following actions to address near-term risk concerns while expanding their operational reach. They should do this while focusing on the enterprise’s objectives of growing the business and expanding their markets.

• Center On ROI, financial accountability and capital discipline for technology and infrastructure modernisation, AI investments and other growth drivers
• Treatment Data governance and management as a mission-critical component of technology enablement and modernization
• develop A clear quantification framework that translates cyber risks into financial and business-impact metrics – for example, the FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) framework
• align Align AI goals with business strategy and invest in scalable AI infrastructure and technologies. Emphasize a strong technical foundation that includes flexible data pipelines, cloud platforms, and integration tools to enable AI agents to operate efficiently
• Priority People as the inevitable driver of high returns on AI investment. Dedicate resources to skilling, hiring, and enabling teams to effectively use and collaborate with AI solutions
• way and document the risk of tariffs, sanctions and related trade restrictions across product and service portfolios and supply chains to pinpoint and address areas of margin pressure.
• to install Realistic timelines and investment requirements for supply chain improvements when raw material access and other constraints are identified
• to ensure Third-party risk management capabilities address cybersecurity and data privacy concerns, as well as vendors’ AI usage and financial sustainability
• assessment Address the high cost of legacy IT systems – high operating costs, process inefficiencies and talent attraction and retention challenges, delays in AI deployment and adverse impact on maintaining competitive advantage – and work with the CIO to determine a cost-effective modernization plan.
• invest Improving regulatory compliance infrastructure, given the increasingly fragmented, complex and volatile global regulatory landscape and its impacts on financial, cybersecurity, sustainability and human capital reporting requirements

In this environment, CFOs who combine investment discipline with effective risk oversight – including emerging AI-related exposures – will be best positioned to drive sustainable growth and value.