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Most generative AI projects in finance fail. Here’s what it means for CFOs and their future hires.

Mid-market finance chiefs aren’t hiring like they used to. A Gartner survey of more than 300 finance executives shows that while companies are pouring more money into artificial intelligence tools, the share of CFOs planning to expand headcount has fallen.

“Four out of five were either freezing capacity or headcount or reducing capacity in their team,” Alok Ajmera, chief executive officer at Prophix, told Global Finance in a phone interview.

While CEOs and boards pressure their teams to show productivity gains from generative AI, results have been uneven, Ajmera added.

The GenAI Reality Check

Another Gartner estimate shows that more than 90% of generative AI proof-of-concept projects in finance departments failed to generate incremental value. This “staggering amount,” Ajmera said, curdles AI enthusiasm into AI skepticism.

“A lot of projects from an AI perspective felt really good on paper, but have not actually materialized the value … in real life,” he added.

He attributed the shortfall to a mismatch between the technology and finance work itself.

“This is not a probabilistic exercise, this is a deterministic exercise,” Ajmera said. “You can’t be 99% accurate with your numbers. You have to be 100% accurate.” CFOs remain comfortable using AI for reporting, commentary and analytics, he said, but “extraordinarily uncomfortable” letting it touch journal entries or adjust numbers directly.

Shifting Skills, not Mass Layoffs

Ajmera pushed back on warnings of mass AI-driven unemployment, including recent comments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saying “the Doomerism view has been overhyped.” He pointed to software engineering — home to agentic coding, the most monetized AI use case to date — as evidence. “We have hired more engineers in 2026 than we did in 2025,” despite productivity tools making individual engineers more efficient, he said.

He predicted finance will see similar skill displacement rather than outright job losses. “I would not be surprised in a couple of years if we start seeing finance operations engineers” managing AI agents on staff. Slower hiring, Ajmera added, is not the same as letting people go.

Ajmera also described a broader consolidation trend, as companies unwind software sprawl built up earlier this decade. He cited a mid-market manufacturer in the Midwest whose cloud application count grew “from five or six applications to 25 or 30” before Prophix helped consolidate roughly nine or 10 of those tools onto a single platform.

Looking ahead, Ajmera said he expects more caution from CFOs. “There’s a lot of caution in the air,” he said, predicting longer purchasing cycles and heavier scrutiny of technology spending amid broader economic uncertainty.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com

Jim Ovia steps down as Zenith Bank chairman after 36 years, passing the torch to CEO Adaora Umeoji.

When Jim Ovia founded Zenith Bank in July 1990 at age 38, with NGN 20 million (then about $2.5 million) in capital, Nigeria already had a rich history of indigenous banking institutions. National Bank of Nigeria (1933), African Continental Bank (1937), and Agbonmagbe Bank (1945), later renamed Wema Bank, were among the major banks. 

In May, nearly 36 years after Zenith’s founding, Ovia retired as chairman after completing the maximum 12-year tenure permitted under the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) corporate governance code. Known as the godfather of Nigerian banking, Ovia leaves Zenith as Nigeria’s most valuable listed bank, with more than NGN 30 trillion (about $19.5 billion) in assets and NGN 1 trillion in after-tax profit in 2025.

Zenith was among the institutions that emerged stronger from Nigeria’s landmark 2004–05 banking consolidation, during which the CBN raised minimum capital requirements from NGN 2 billion to NGN 25 billion, reducing the number of the nation’s commercial banks from 89 to 25. 

Building an African Banking Empire

The lender has since expanded beyond Nigeria, with subsidiaries in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia; branches in London, Paris, and Dubai; a representative office in China; and a growing East African presence following the acquisition of Paramount Bank Kenya. Last year, Zenith became the first Nigerian lender to exceed NGN 5 trillion in market capitalization.

The leadership transition follows years of internal succession planning. Adaora Umeoji, who joined Zenith in 1998, became the bank’s first female group managing director and CEO in 2024, after a 28-year career at the institution. Under her leadership, Zenith completed an NGN 350.46 billion capital raise, 160% subscribed, comfortably exceeding Nigeria’s new regulatory capital requirements while maintaining record profitability.

Ovia strengthened his financial commitment before stepping down as chairman. In December, five months before retiring, he acquired an additional NGN 14.8 billion in Zenith Bank shares, increasing his holding to 16.2% and cementing his position as the bank’s largest individual shareholder.

Ovia’s leadership laid “the foundation for what has become one of Africa’s most respected and globally recognized financial institutions,” according to the Nigerian Education Loan Fund. Shareholder advocate Boniface Okezie, national coordinator of the Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, terms Zenith “one of the strongest banks in the country because of the solid foundation [Ovia] laid,” and expresses confidence that the lender’s governance framework will remain strong without its founder.

Charles Wachira is a contributing writer based in Kenya.