Half of finance teams globally are stuck in the “middle” on AI maturity
For CFOs, this middle represents the highest execution risk: enough activity to create expectations, but not enough structure to scale
Sofia, 11th February 2026 — New research from Payhawk reveals that AI adoption in finance is no longer “early” but it is deeply uneven. Based on a global survey of 1,520 finance and business leaders, Payhawk’s CFO AI Readiness Report shows that half of organisations now sit in the “middle”, actively experimenting with AI in finance yet unable to scale it safely or consistently into core workflows.
As CFOs head into budget season under pressure to fund AI and automation, the findings offer a reality check on where the market actually stands and where execution risk is most concentrated.
The middle is now the market’s centre of gravity
The CFO’s AI Readiness Report asked respondents to rate their organisation’s AI maturity on a 1–10 scale (low: 1–3, mid: 4–6, high: 7–10). The findings show:
- Around 50% of organisations globally sit in mid-maturity (4–6), they are adopting AI but not yet running it as a core finance capability.
- Nearly one‑third self‑identify as high maturity (7–10), which makes the “leader” label common enough to warrant closer examination and broad enough that it can’t be treated as a single operating reality.
- The market is moving unevenly, not sequentially, with a small group scaling, a large middle struggling to convert activity into operations, and a tail that remains early.
Figure 1. AI maturity distribution
This uneven distribution matters more in finance than in most other business functions. Unlike experimentation-heavy domains, finance AI must survive controls, audit, accountability and policy enforcement before it can scale into workflows that materially affect the business.
“Payhawk sits where AI ambition meets finance reality,” said Hristo Borisov, CEO and Co-Founder of Payhawk. “We’re in the workflows where approvals turn into spend, payments go out, exceptions pile up, and audit trails get tested. That’s why we’re convinced the blocker isn’t experimentation but running AI inside controls without losing accountability.”
AI maturity varies sharply by company context
AI readiness in finance is strongly patterned by industry and company size. Tech organisations with more than 251 employees show the highest maturity levels globally, with over 70% rating themselves as highly mature. Of smaller organisations in regulated and core-economy sectors* (50–250 employees), only 13.5% report high maturity. By contrast, large non-tech organisations overwhelmingly sit in the mid-maturity band, actively adopting AI but struggling to scale it into core finance operations.
A related structural signal helps explain this pattern. Higher self-reported AI maturity is more common in organisations with complex, multi-entity structures, where scale forces investment in standardisation, shared services and centralised controls. But this does not guarantee AI readiness – without data consistency and data alignment, poor governance can create a lag.
Challenging the AI “leaders vs laggards” narrative
A key implication of the research is that self‑identified “AI leaders” are not a uniform group. The headline maturity number masks a wide variation in how finance teams deploy AI in practice. Some organisations have embedded AI into workflows with clear accountability. Others are moving fast without minimum guardrails or investing with intent but lacking the foundations to scale.
The research shows that the limiting factor for financial AI maturity is not model capability, but rather whether adoption can be made stable, defensible, and repeatable within financial control environments.
Note to editors
*Core economy refers to industries where value is created primarily through operating and coordinating real-world systems at scale (e.g. manufacturing, retail, logistics, energy, healthcare delivery), rather than through software products or professional services.
Methodology
To gain insights into how CFOs are adapting to the changing landscape, Payhawk partnered with IResearch to interview 1,520 senior professionals globally. Using affirmative statements developed in close collaboration with finance and business leaders, IResearch conducted interviews across eight countries to reflect genuine operational realities and challenges. Coverage included:
- Regions: DACH, Spain, France, Benelux, UK & Ireland, United States*
- Seniority: C-suite, VPs, Directors, and senior individual contributors*
- Functions: Finance, Accounting, Sales, HR, Procurement*
- Industries: Services, Digital, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Education & Non-profit, B2C*
- Company size: 50–100 FTE, 101–250 FTE, 251–500 FTE, 501–1,000 FTE, and 1,000+ FTE*)
