5 Finance Trends CFOs are Watching in the Rest of 2025

Buckled in? 2025 has, by many accounts, been a wild, unpredictable ride for those working in corporate finance. Amid ongoing geopolitical conflicts and a U.S. president intent on reshaping global trade, CFOs have had much to grapple with over the last few months.

As we move past the halfway point, finance chiefs are being tapped, as always, to provide a sense of stability. But they’re also increasingly being asked to offer a forward-looking, strategic lens for their organizations.

Here are five ongoing trends that are likely to dominate boardroom conversations over the remainder of 2025.

1. C-Suite Cross-Collaboration isn’t Slowing Down

The domain of the CFO is widening. Most in the profession agree that the days of simply reporting financial results after the fact are largely over; now, finance chiefs are being asked more and more to peer into the future and step into strategic roles.

“We’re definitely starting to leave behind traditional Excel sheets,” said Amy Dickerson, EVP, CFO and CHRO with environmental remediation firm Regenesis. “I don’t dabble in Excel every day anymore. I’m dealing with higher-level initiatives and strategies.”

That also means that CFOs are working more closely with other C-Suite peers. In some cases, like Dickerson’s, they’re filling multiple C-Suite roles themselves. CFO and COO hybrids, for example, are not uncommon. As one finance chief put it, it’s a trend that is likely to continue “on steroids” in the years ahead.

“A CFO is trained in regulation and financial metrics originally, but you have a lot of exposure across an organization,” added Dickerson, who also sits on the CFO Alliance’s global advisory board. “You’re probably sitting in the one seat where you have the most exposure to crossover.”

Kadidia Cooper, chief financial and operating officer at nonprofit scholarship provider 10,000 Degrees, noted CFOs are also “often the first ones who see certain trends happening because we have all the data in one place.”

“Forecasting has become much more important for businesses to remain competitive,” she added.

2. Tariffs and Their Effects Remain Unpredictable, but CFOs are Pivoting Quickly

As President Donald Trump continues on-again, off-again levies on foreign-made goods, finance chiefs are doing what they can to respond. But their responses, of course, are hardly uniform.

“The size of the company, in some ways, dictates the response,” said Stephen Philipson, head of wealth, corporate, commercial and institutional banking at U.S. Bank. “A very large corporation has lots of leverage through liquidity. They oftentimes have pretty good room in their margins to absorb short-term tariff increases, and a lot more flexibility in terms of moving around supply chains. Middle-market clients tend to have a little less flexibility.”

Jeff Codd, VP of finance at Connecticut-based electrical supplier U.S. Electrical Services, said his company has, generally speaking, adjusted language in its terms and conditions to provide some protection from any tariff-related impacts. The business put those in place during Trump’s first term in office.

At the same time, Codd said he’s also been making quick inventory adjustments to guard against any potential disruptions.

“We are cautiously evaluating impact across specific categories on the amount of inventory we’re holding, while making sure we have inventory on the shelves for our customers,” Codd said.

For some finance chiefs, tariffs have some clear historical parallels.

“The whole situation with tariffs mimics, to me, what it felt like during COVID,” Dickerson says.

3. The Prospect for Dealmaking Remains an Open Question

With a seemingly business-friendlier administration in the White House, many leaders expected 2025 to be a year of deals. And indeed, some reports have shown that M&A activity has increased marginally over the first half of the year. Codd with U.S. Electrical Services, for instance, noted his firm has completed three acquisitions over the last 12 months.

But there have also been some stumbling blocks due, in part, to an aggressive tariff regime that has paralyzed deals for some firms, especially middle-market ones.

Where do things go from here? Some observers see reason for M&A optimism over the rest of 2025. “It feels like there is a reemergence” in risk appetite among business leaders, U.S. Bank’s Philipson said.

“You’ve got a very attractive finance environment. You’ve got spreads at all-time tights. There’s the expectation that the Fed will resume cutting again starting next month, which again creates a positive risk appetite environment.”

In some cases, Philipson said, leaders are simply adjusting to a new normal. “Some of the worst-case scenarios have been taken off the table, whether that’s around the tax bill or how meaningful tariffs could be,” he said. “Inflation is still present, but it hasn’t spun out of control at this point.”

4. The 120-Hour CPA Pathway Could Become a National Standard

With the official blessing of AICPA and NASBA last month, the 120-hour CPA pathway may well see adoption by all 50 states. If not this year, it may come soon.

In the ninth edition of the Uniform Accountancy Act, the two organizations included a pathway that would require only a bachelor’s degree in accounting — the equivalent of 120 credit hours — as well as two years of experience and passage of the CPA exam. Notably, the traditional 150-hour pathway remains a valid option.

In a July interview, Jack Castonguay, associate professor of accounting at Hofstra University, predicted that it’s in every state’s best interest to adopt the change.

“If they don’t, they’d be putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why all the jurisdictions won’t ultimately adopt this.”

That’s not to say that all finance leaders are fully on board with CPA licensure changes.

“It’s touchy,” said Dickerson. “The talent pipeline is a huge issue, and I know they’re trying to alleviate it” with these changes.

That being said, “I worry about lessening too much,” she added. “I know there’s still a lot of discussion” around it.

5. The Promise of Artificial Intelligence Looms Large, but Many Questions Remain

Evangelists of generative AI and agentic AI — types of artificial intelligence designed to operate with little or no human oversight — are betting big on more automation in the workforce. Big Tech firms are dumping billions of dollars into the emerging technology.

Finance leaders see potential, but many are moving forward with caution. Similar to tariff responses, an organization’s size plays a role in how its leaders think about AI. The risks, of course, have not totally gone away, and some large language models’ propensity for “hallucinations” — chatbots’ tendency to occasionally produce misleading or false responses — has given some business leaders pause.

As a result, finance leaders are looking for narrow, discrete use cases for the tech, with clear guardrails in place. That might mean a tailor-made large language model using only internal company data instead of dumping proprietary information into, say, ChatGPT.

“We’ve taken a slower approach to make sure our systems are ready,” Regenesis’ Dickerson said of AI tools.

For his part, U.S. Bank’s Stephenson maintained AI is likely to drive productivity gains in the months and years ahead. “I think there is very real momentum to it,” he said.

 

This article was written by Dan Niepow from CFO.com and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.