Finance teams are under more pressure than ever to deliver strategic insight, but the skills to do so aren't keeping pace with expectations. In this expert webinar, Carsten Gerger, VP Finance at Lucanet, and Anders Liu-Lindberg, partner at Implement Consulting Group, tackle the finance capability gap head-on: what it really is, where it shows up in day-to-day work, and why automation alone won't solve it. You can watch the whole recording here.
What is the finance capability gap, in plain terms?
Carsten: It's the distance between what the business expects from finance and what finance teams are actually equipped to deliver. It's not that people are getting worse. The expectation has shifted, and capability hasn't kept pace with it.
Anders: And that gap has been building for a couple of decades, honestly. Every crisis, every transformation, raises the bar again. Technology was supposed to buy us the capacity to close that gap. It's helped, but there's been a lag.
Where does the gap actually show up day to day?
Carsten: Not in the analysis itself. Most finance teams can analyze numbers well. It shows up in ownership. We often have two well-balanced options in front of us and no recommendation. The willingness to take a position, put your name on it, and own the outcome, that's the real gap.
Anders: I'd add stakeholder influence and business partnering to that list. Those are people skills, and most of us went into finance because we were good with numbers, not people. Learning to build relationships across a business takes years, not a workshop.
Why hasn't automation closed this gap already?
Carsten: Because automation and artificial intelligence solve different problems. Automation handles deterministic work, the tasks with one correct answer every time. That's been running well for years now. Artificial intelligence is probabilistic. It can help draft a narrative or accelerate a model, but it still needs a human who understands the business to judge whether the output makes sense.
Anders: There was a test done on AI models handling month-end close tasks, and they landed around 60% accuracy. They failed exactly where judgment was required. That tells you where the real work still is.
What happens when finance teams do get time back?
Anders: We ran a poll on this. Only 19% of finance professionals said they'd genuinely shifted freed-up time to higher-value work. Over a third said they intended to go strategic but drifted back into old habits.
Carsten: That doesn’t surprise me. If you free up capacity without providing clear direction, people will revert to what they know: reconciliations, tie-outs and comfortable work. You need a stakeholder to point them towards work that actually matters to the business.
Why doesn't traditional training fix this?
Carsten: A two-day offsite feels great for two days. Then you're back at your desk with the same deadlines and the same accuracy demands, and nothing changes. The environment eats the training.
Anders: What works instead is a rhythm. Shorter training cycles paired with immediate application, repeated over months. You need to shift back and forth between learning and using, not do one long training and never return to it.
What's the one mindset shift finance needs most?
Carsten: Let go of the 99% mindset when it comes to internal work. If you’re reporting externally, accuracy is of the utmost importance. But when it comes to internal work, waiting for perfection often ends up costing more than making a mistake and correcting it. This is why it should be at the top of every finance team's 'stop doing' list: no more polishing internal reports to the last decimal place and no more third review loop on a forecast. What you stop doing is as important as what you start.
Anders: I've said before that being 55% right and sharing it is often more valuable than staying silent until you're certain. You'll be helpful far more often than not.
What should leaders actually do to close this gap?
Carsten: Hire for technical skill, then build business acumen deliberately by putting people directly in the room with other functions. And be a role model for failure. If your team never sees you get something wrong, they'll assume failure isn't allowed, and they'll stop taking the ownership we actually need from them.
Ready to close the finance capability gap in your team?
Watch the full conversation between Carsten Gerger and Anders Liu-Lindberg as they dive deeper into practical strategies for building future-ready finance capabilities, from rethinking training approaches to creating a culture where ownership thrives.
