CFOs and senior finance executives are dealing with a growing number of responsibilities and demands as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.
The report, from consulting firm Protiviti, found that the pandemic has been a wake-up call to finance departments that weren’t already investing, or weren’t investing enough, in cloud-based systems as they have struggled to shift to the remote work environment. Eighty percent of the 1,057 finance leaders surveyed ranked security and privacy of data as a top priority, while 78 percent cited enhanced data analytics, and 72 percent cited cloud-based applications.
Chinmoy Bhatiya is an Associate Partner at Capco, leading the firm's Technology, Data and AI practice. He advises financial institutions on harnessing AI as a strategic advantage from individual productivity enhancement to adopting agentic operating models. With extensive experience helping organizations scale emerging technologies responsibly, Chinmoy focuses on balancing innovation with governance, enabling clients to realize business value from AI while maintaining strong controls, accountability, and operational resilience.
Brian Keller is vice president of AI and data science for LexisNexis Risk Solutions. In this role, Brian is responsible for driving AI strategy and execution for the insurance business, with a focus on workforce education, team enablement, and project execution that translates research and development into customer-facing capabilities.
Brian joined LexisNexis Risk Solutions in 2022 as part of the acquisition of Flyreel, where he led the software engineering and AI teams. During his tenure, Brian has developed and deployed AI and computer vision solutions, including aerial imagery and ground-level interior and exterior analysis, as well as 3D scene reconstruction for claims and underwriting use cases. He has also led the development of generative AI capabilities, including transcription, summarization, question answering, and agentic automation.
Brian holds a PhD in systems and industrial engineering and a master's degree in systems engineering from the University of Arizona, along with a bachelor's degree with majors in physics and business from the University of Mount Union.
Adam Barbera is the CEO and founder of Dost, a native-AI finance automation platform built for the way finance teams actually work. After years selling enterprise software to CFOs, he saw the same broken accounts payable processes repeated in every company he visited, and decided to fix it himself. He founded Dost in 2021 with two colleagues and closed a $7.8 million Series A in late 2025.
Of those respondents who are CFOs and vice presidents of finance, 72 percent ranked cloud-based applications as a top priority to address over the next 12 months. Seventeen percent ranked cloud-based applications as the most important finance priority for their organizations to address, signifying a big jump from the 8 percent of respondents who indicated so in a similar survey by Protiviti last year.
“Having the right technology infrastructure and cloud capabilities is now considered a baseline in order to operate effectively and efficiently and will continue to be as organizations move into a hybrid work environment,” said Chris Wright, managing director and global leader of Protiviti’s Business Performance Improvement practice, in a statement. “COVID-19 disruptions underscored the critical nature of a truly digital finance workforce and companies without advanced technologies and digital processes faced a difficult transition to remote work. We’re now seeing an increasing number of boards and CEOs tap their finance leaders for guidance about whether their organization is allocating enough resources to their technology infrastructure.”
Labor models are changing, in part as a result of the pandemic, with 18 percent of the finance leaders surveyed saying their organizations are relying on managed services providers, while 29 percent are augmenting their staff to handle financial planning and analysis with greater speed and agility.
