AI Fluency: A Skill Future Treasury Leaders Rate Most Important

# Technology

# AI

# People and Talent

Emerging finance leaders expect AI skills to be critical to treasury leadership, changing how they learn, work and demonstrate their value.

Three-quarters of NeuGroup for Future Finance Leaders members surveyed say AI, automation and digital fluency will be among the most important skills for successful treasury leaders over the next five to 10 years, ahead of strategic thinking and business acumen as well as executive communication and storytelling (see chart below). The full survey of 55 high-potential treasury and corporate finance professionals is available on the Future Finance Leaders group page on NeuGroup Connect.

The findings of the 2026 Future Finance Leaders Career Development Survey underscore the extent to which AI is now seen as an essential tool by the teams managed by senior finance leaders pushing the next generation to automate work and use agents to solve problems.

“We've seen roles created because people identify the huge amounts of work that AI can do,” said one FFL member at a recent session. “If you're the one that steps up and says, 'I can be that person,' that could be the project that becomes a role, and a role that becomes yours."

From training to treasury work. During the session, several members said their bosses are providing access, training and room to experiment with technology. One described using newly available AI models to explore automated reconciliation of bank data across systems and set up online-banking access. Another said employees at her company are being asked to complete a companywide AI training program by next summer.

The examples include day-to-day treasury work. One member said her team now uses Claude to generate its regular cash-positioning email, with a human reviewing the output, and is moving a monthly metrics review from PowerPoint to a dashboard. Others described AI as a way to automate repetitive reporting and processing so employees can spend less time on manual work.

The old skills still matter. One member said AI’s rise to the top of the list hasn’t displaced more traditional leadership skills—strategic thinking and executive communication remained among the top three. “It’s really important to call out, those don’t go away,” he said.

Those capabilities also ranked high in NeuGroup’s 2024 career-development research, while the technology emphasis has shifted from TMS and fintech toward AI.

What’s changing, one member said, is how technology fits into the job. Another member said he has seen employees with less treasury experience advance faster when they approach problems differently and look for ways to optimize the work. “It’s no longer about being the best treasury expert or having the most experience,” he said. “Instead, the question is, ‘How can I optimize?’”