AI Cuts Junior Finance Jobs and Risks a Future CFO Shortage

Nearly two-thirds of CFOs surveyed by the Oliver Wyman Forum and the New York Stock Exchange expect junior roles to shrink as a share of their finance teams over the next three years. That shift, executives warn, is dismantling the training ground where future finance chiefs learn the trade.

PwC offers one concrete measure. The firm took on 200 fewer entry-level staff in the U.K. last year. Automation is eating the tasks junior accountants once used to build their understanding of finance mechanics: reconciling accounts, manual data entry, the month-end close grind.

"I really do worry how the next generation of controllers, finance directors and, eventually, CFOs will learn when those entry-level jobs are not the same as what they used to be," says Catherine Birkett, CFO of London-based payments company GoCardless. Understanding the data, she argues, helps finance professionals get more out of AI tools — and that understanding is built in junior roles.

"A year ago finance chiefs were unsure what difference AI would make. Now every single one of them is using it," says Mark Freebairn, head of the board and CFO practice at executive search firm Odgers. "If it's not replacing all of it yet, it will do."

Why is the finance pyramid becoming a diamond?

With fewer trainees, companies are abandoning the traditional pyramid structure of the finance function. Freebairn says many are moving to a "diamond-shaped" model: more mid-level professionals, fewer trainees.

That creates a pipeline problem. "If you want a hundred managers but you only need two trainees, when those managers have retired and you've only got two people to replace them with, what are you going to do?" Freebairn asks. The usual answer is poaching from rivals. "If you're all creating diamond management structures, there won't be anyone to steal."

"There are absolutely going to be fewer entry-level finance jobs," Birkett says. "Those that remain will go to capable candidates who look little like the accountant of 30 years ago."

The timing compounds an existing problem. CFO turnover is at a record high, yet only 16% of finance chiefs say their organization has a proactive succession plan, according to Russell Reynolds' Global CFO Turnover Index 2025 Report. "Nobody's worked it out yet," Birkett says, adding that the Big Four audit firms, which hire graduates by the thousand, must be wrestling with the same dilemma.

Christophe Catoir, president of recruitment group Adecco, warns against experienced professionals "pulling the drawbridge up after them." The hardest hit, he says, will be young people without professional networks or the means to take unpaid work — risking progress on diversity in finance. "Technological progress should be used to help the workforce, not become another barrier to social mobility."

How is AI changing finance hiring?

Birkett has rewritten the GoCardless interview. Candidates used to get a data set and a copy of Excel in the final round. Now they get an AI model and must analyze the data and build a presentation. She watches whether they accept the AI's first answer or push deeper. "The absolute worst thing that could happen in finance is that people just accept what they've been told," she says.

"Being comfortable with technology does not necessarily mean you understand how to use it effectively," Catoir cautions. Freebairn goes further: "AI is going to require more technical competence than ever. Someone has to know when the machine is wrong."

Bunq, the Amsterdam-based digital bank, has abandoned CVs altogether. Applicants complete a seven-step process including personality and abstract reasoning tests, then spend a day in its offices being tested on banking regulation, AI use, and building calculations.

"We are not hiring for where someone has been. We are hiring for how they think," says Bunq CFO Brian Spaans. One junior regulatory specialist came from data analysis in sales. "If we had been screening CVs in the traditional way, we probably would not have looked twice."

Can juniors still learn the trade?

Technical knowledge can be taught and examined. Skills like influencing, persuading, and negotiating cannot, Freebairn says. "How do you create that if you don't have development jobs? Some lessons only come from being in the room, haggling with a buying director over which T-shirts to stock, getting it wrong and doing better next time."

Birkett's answer: juniors will sit in meetings, watch colleagues interrogate numbers, rotate across departments, and sometimes keep doing reconciliations by hand. "We're going to have to accept that juniors will take longer to earn their keep," she says.

Bunq still requires junior staff to reconcile data against the bank's records and document the process for auditors and regulators. "You cannot automate a process you do not understand," Spaans says. "AI speeds up the work. It does not remove the need to understand it. If anything it raises the bar, because when output arrives faster, ownership of whether it is right lands more squarely on the person who built it."

The approach appears to work. Bunq's finance and treasury staff stay three to four years on average. "In a field where junior churn is a known problem, that suggests the work feels worth staying for," Spaans says. Companies still cutting junior roles without an answer may face a far harder search when the CFO seat opens.