Future CFO

Whilczel Canlas built her career on the bedrock of technical excellence. As a certified public accountant, she is fluent in the language of financial reporting, controls, and compliance. It is a world she understands intimately, and one in which she excels. Yet the single most critical decision of her over-two-decade journey was not mastering another accounting standard or tightening another control.

As finance becomes a harder job as the business gets more complex, finance leaders often bear with challenges surrounding decision-making, cash management, and operational overload. According to Velosio, autonomous finance creates value in areas including cycle time, cash, capacity, and control. In a report, Velosio revealed that shorter close changes how a finance team spends time. When month-end work is dominated by reconciliation and clean-up, the team works backward from deadlines.

As tokenised payments and fraud detection tools advance in 2026 and become increasingly one connected part of the enterprise finance stack, it has become fundamental for finance teams to add these among the concoction of priorities. Studies have found that in 2026, fraud is moving beyond its traditional pattern and enterprise teams are tasked to deal with account takeover, synthetic identities, business email compromise, payment redirection, and cross-border fraud, among others.

Finance leaders in Singapore are leading the way in putting AI to work in finance amid continued investments in technological advancements. In a new study commissioned by Airwallex and conducted by Forrester Consulting, it was revealed that organisations are increasingly discovering that fragmented financial infrastructure is becoming the biggest barrier to unlocking AI’s full potential.

Singapore CFOs are seeking to lead on value creation, amid challenges in efforts for AI transformation due to skills and mindset hurdles. In a recent report by EY, it was revealed that 30% of Singapore CFO respondents see their AI preparedness as leading or advanced while most still have only a limited grasp and are yet to see the technological advancement’s full potential.

CFOs in Hong Kong are facing a new reality, with talent now a strategic risk. Between 2026 and 2027, cautious hiring contrasts with fierce competition for hybrid skilled professionals who blend accounting expertise, digital literacy, commercial acumen, and regulatory fluency. Automation and AI threaten traditional career pipelines, while rapid AI adoption, family office growth, and capital markets resurgence intensify demand, driving attrition and salary inflation.

As financing priorities assume central stage among organisations amid rising freight, logistics, and energy costs, many businesses naturally turn to look at more flexible financing options to better manage cash flow gaps and support day-to-day operations. Economic uncertainty undeniably continues to influence business planning, and CFOs and finance leaders take on the task to reassess their liquidity strategies to ensure they can respond quickly to changing market conditions.

Southeast Asia private equity deal activity slowed in the second quarter of 2026 amid heightened investor caution, according to EY‘s recent study. PE investments in the region during the period included 10 PE-backed investments worth US$935.5 million, compared with 19 deals worth US$9.2 billion in the first quarter. PE-backed deal volume fell by 55% year over year, while deal value saw a year-on-year decrease of 58% over the same period.

In line with decoding the forces shaping Asia’s next generation of businesses, it is inevitable for the Finance team to dive deep on the matter from enterprise-level perspective. According to a report by Aspire, the AI platform race is becoming increasingly competitive across Asia’s startup ecosystem and those from the enterprise-level are looking to know what these behaviors are signalling about the future of enterprise finance, workforce strategy, technology governance, and capital allocation.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Philippine Payments Management, Inc. (PPMI) unveiled three new digital payment initiatives to make payments more accessible, convenient, and responsive, launching Direct Debit PH, and the interoperable initiatives InstaPay Cash-In and InstaPay for Business. According to a report by the Philippine News Agency, the InstaPay for Business increases maximum transfers by registered businesses by 10 times from PHP50,000 to PHP500,000.