By Zaid Aboobaker, Founder & CEO, CompassPoint Consulting
Dubai, UAE, 26 May 2026- For scale-up businesses in the UAE, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept or a conference talking point. It’s already changing how finance functions work. The question isn’t whether AI will take over finance, rather, it’s which parts of finance should be automated, which parts must remain human, and whether leadership teams are willing to redesign the function properly.
There are areas where AI and automation can make an immediate difference. We’ve already seen that bank reconciliation, invoice processing, expense categorisation and first-draft variance analysis can all be largely automated today.
And in a 30-person business, that can be transformational.
Instead of having a three or four-person finance team spending most of its time on transaction processing, the same team can spend far more time on business partnering, scenario planning, margin analysis and value-adding work.
That’s an important shift to note, because founders don’t need finance teams simply to tell them what happened last month. They need finance teams that can help them make better decisions about what happens next.
But, I don’t see AI taking over the strategic side of finance.
For example, it can’t replace the difficult conversation with a founder about why a major client may not be worth serving because the margin does not work. Equally, it cannot judge whether the business should push ahead with hiring or decide to preserve cash.
And, as of today, it certainly can’t understand the full context of a client relationship, a leadership team, a market shift or a founder’s appetite for risk. These sort of decisions still need a human who understands not just finance, but business as a living system.
AI needs reliability
The current generation of AI tools is useful, but they’re not all the same. Purpose-built finance tools that handle reconciliation, automated reporting and structured data analysis are reliable enough to deploy in production. We use them across our client base and they perform.
General-purpose AI tools are different. They are excellent for drafting, summarising and brainstorming, but they’re not reliable for outputs that need to be exactly right.
Reliability depends on three things: the maturity of the tool, the quality of the data going in, and the rigour of human review on the way out. Get those three things right, and AI delivers serious value. Skip any of them, and you are taking a risk.
This is especially important in the UAE, where the regulatory environment is evolving quickly. Corporate tax is now in its enforcement phase, and e-invoicing, as just one example, becomes mandatory by the end of 2027. VAT requirements continue. The pace of regulatory change here is faster than in many mature markets.
AI is well suited to managing consistency, once a rule has been interpreted and the logic has been set. It can apply that logic across thousands of transactions faster and more consistently than a manual process. What it cannot do is take ownership of the interpretation itself. When a new regulation is published, we still need human inputs to understand what it means for that specific business. AI won’t handle regulatory change for you; but it will execute rules given to it.
AI Will Separate Agile Teams From The Rest ((Illustrative Image)
Human-AI hybrids
I think the best model is not human versus AI, it’s a deliberate human-AI hybrid. Most finance teams are already using AI tools, but many have not consciously decided what should be automated and what should not. They have more software, but the same operating model.
The right approach is to map every recurring finance task and decide where the line sits. Does AI execute, with humans reviewing exceptions? Or does a human execute, with AI as a support tool? That’s not an IT decision. It is a CFO decision, because it goes to the heart of how the finance function creates value.
What matters is whether leadership has the courage to change the operating model, not just the toolset. AI should not simply be bolted onto old processes. Used properly, it can relieve finance teams of mundane, repetitive tasks and give them the headspace to focus on more challenging, more valuable work: questioning assumptions, supporting founders, improving forecasts and helping the business make better decisions.
There are also areas where AI should not own the output. Investor communications, board commentary and statutory filings may be supported by AI, but accountability must sit with a named individual. The same applies to decisions involving people: compensation, performance reviews, restructuring and layoff modelling. Even if AI can process the data, the person affected deserves a human who can explain the decision and answer for it.
The real value of AI is not that in replacing the CFO, rather, it serves to make CFOs more useful. By taking care of repetitive work and improving the quality of financial insight, it allows finance leaders to spend more time exercising judgement and providing strategic counsel. For SMEs in the UAE, that can be hugely powerful. AI-enabled cash models can show founders where margin is leaking, where working capital is tightening and where problems are likely to appear.
And removing the element of surprise helps businesses make faster, better and more data-driven decisions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zaid Aboobaker is the Founder and CEO of CompassPoint Consulting, with more than 20 years of experience across the Middle East, India, and Europe. A CIMA Fellow and CGMA, he specialises in growth, transformation, M&A and finance leadership, helping businesses scale sustainably through sharper strategy, stronger systems and operational discipline globally.
HAVE A STORY, EXPERT ANALYSIS, OR OPINION TO SHARE? CONTRIBUTE TO EMIRATESREPORTER.COM- REACH US AT editor@emiratesreporter.com
