How AI is changing accounting jobs in finance
Artificial intelligence is impacting the entire financial services industry. Accounting and audit functions are no different, and as the pace of technological growth continues, these functions might end up being some of the most completely overhauled. But what does that look like in practice?
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To start with, AI is absorbing many of the tasks through which junior accountants traditionally learned the job. Big four firm Deloitte, for example, is overhauling graduate training in its UK audit and assurance business from September 2026; trainees will now sit 12 out of 14 exams in their first year of practice (the exams were formerly spread over three years). Deloitte UK Managing Partner for Audit and Assurance Allee Bonnard told the ICAEW that the new program will lead to stronger “communication, teamwork and problem solving” skills rather than focusing just on “old-school accounting”, such as performing a cash reconciliation. The supposition is that this old-school work can now be done by AI.
Inside banks, the same logic applies. Product control's daily P&L production, financial control's reconciliations, and the first draft of almost any report are exactly the sort of workloads that AI tools can now handle instead of a human being.
When we looked at the day in the life of a Deloitte banking and capital markets auditor Bella Smith, she noted that AI was providing “some initial analysis” which she further refined (and checked, of course). “The technology helps us to understand movements… that may have previously been harder to spot,” she said.
Deloitte’s Bonnard said that accounting will become “more engaging and exciting” in the future. How that works, and how it will work in the future, varies significantly between firms – KPMG said last year that its AI agent, Clara, was for “flowcharting”, as well as easily finding documentation from previous years.
Tedious but necessary work, essentially, but with a rather material impact on hiring - Deloitte's own UK early-careers intake fell from more than 1,700 in 2023 to less than 1,500 in 2025, for example.
The exact headcount impact this will have at banks is unclear, but given how banks treat their middle- and back-office teams, no doubt many roles will go the way of the dodo. Banks including ABN Amro, Unicredit, BNP Paribas, and others plan to reduce headcount specifically in support functions due to AI. Financial roles like accounting are very much in that bucket.
On top of how existing jobs are changing, a new generation of startups is going further and building their operating models around the use of AI. Repodo, an audit firm founded by former executives of Nordic neobank Lunar (and a professional auditor), raised €8.2m in pre-seed funding in August 2026 in Denmark, Finextra reported. It automates data collection, reconciliations, documentation, and transaction analysis, while human auditors provide the risk assessments, professional judgements, and sign-off.
It’s not the only one. Berlin-based Cortea raised €12m in June, EU-Strartups reported, backed by former KPMG global head of audit Larry Bradley. Cortea builds AI agents that review reports and financial statements before human auditors sign them off. It says its agents managed to get through more than 4,000 audit reports in a single season, flagging issues in every one. It’s unclear if these were particularly bad reports.
However, AI doesn't remove the need for the qualification altogether, and seemingly it won’t any time soon. The Financial Reporting Council said in March guidance that "the human auditor is always accountable" for audit outputs, no matter how much of the work the tools perform. UK company law still requires a named senior statutory auditor to sign the report in their own name. Deloitte’s skills of the future - “strong communication, teamwork and problem solving” - will need to be supported by traditional skills, too. For the time being.
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