In recent years, demand for fractional or interim financial leadership has continued to climb, initially driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently accelerated by the rise of artificial intelligence. The integration of AI in finance and accounting has "significantly changed our business" over the past three months, said Jason Hope, fractional CFO and founder of Hope Financial Consulting.

Hope's company, based in San Diego, provides consulting and CFO services to mid-sized businesses. In an interview with CFO Dive, he said AI's impact on his business has been "enormous," adding, "I feel like we're in a whole new world, and six months from now it will be different."

AI opens doors for on-demand talent

Demand for interim C-suite executive leadership has jumped 151% since 2021, according to a report released in April by Business Talent Group, a Heidrick & Struggles company. BTG's 2026 Premium Independent Talent Report shows that demand for interim CFOs rose 14% year over year, with "financial control, accounting, and auditing" skills ranking as the most sought-after.

The report also noted that digital and AI initiatives have become "a significant cross-functional demand area," influencing 2026 talent trends. "These capabilities are involved in a quarter (25%) of requests—often appearing in initiatives led by strategy, PMO and transformation, finance, and other teams without formal technology ownership," the report said.

Hope said that in his experience, AI is "extremely useful" in drafting technical memos or handling routine tasks that a CFO may not personally undertake but must oversee, such as accounts payable or accounts receivable invoicing, helping eliminate time-consuming administrative work. Over the past few months, his business's approach to these tasks has changed dramatically, and he expects this trend to continue as AI becomes more powerful and widespread.

The additional capabilities brought by AI not only enable finance professionals to engage in more strategic and value-added work, but also make companies more willing to consider hiring fractional or part-time financial leaders.

For example, in the early days of his role as a fractional CFO, "I found that once I had established systems and processes, much of what I did was repetitive," Hope said. "Creating those processes and adjusting them as needed requires a lot of work and effort from high-level people," he said, but running them on a monthly basis requires less input and attention.

Hope founded the company in 2018 because "there are many businesses that need expertise from time to time, but not all the time," he told CFO Dive. Hope Financial Consulting serves mid-sized companies in industries such as e-commerce, commercial real estate, and manufacturing. According to his LinkedIn profile, before founding the company, Hope spent three years as vice president of finance and accounting at West Pak Avocado. As a certified public accountant, Hope began his career as an audit associate at Big Four firm KPMG.

Hope said that the steady development and continued adoption of AI is helping organizations become more receptive to the idea of fractional or part-time financial leaders. The emergence of AI is helping functions like HR and finance emulate other functions such as IT or legal, which large companies have long been accustomed to outsourcing, thereby building more trust in placing these functions outside the enterprise.

The AI-powered future of finance

Hope does not believe that the continued proliferation of AI will replace the CFO role, and so far, the technology has not reduced demand for fractional or part-time CFO leadership.

When asked whether some of his clients could directly use AI to handle the accounting work they hire Hope to do, "they could, and some might," he told CFO Dive, but Hope was also "surprised by the lack of willingness" so far, he said.

Hope, who charges by the hour, sees AI not as a competitor but as a tool to help build closer, longer-term relationships with clients. He has been discussing the benefits of AI tools like Claude with clients, demonstrating how AI can be used to build dashboards or analyze data in depth.

For Hope, AI has not replaced CFO-level tasks: "It's a new responsibility for CFOs to help companies adopt AI and learn it themselves," he said.