AI for Finance Professionals

Brought to you by the Victorian Corporate Committee, this session explores how next-generation AI tools are reshaping financial reporting, predictive forecasting and strategic risk management.

Join Anna Tiomina and Matthew Gray for a practical look at what AI adoption means for finance leaders looking to drive efficiency, ensure compliance and maintain a competitive edge in a digital-first economy.

CPD: 1 hour

Learning Outcomes:

Evaluate the impact of AI on the finance and accounting profession
Identify and apply practical AI use cases within finance
Establish a responsible approach to AI adoption through effective governance, risk management, and workforce capability development

Anna Tiomina is a fractional CFO and the founder of Blend2Balance, where she helps finance leaders put AI to practical use in their day-to-day work.

With over 15 years of finance leadership experience and an MBA, she has spent the last several years focused on AI advisory and training for CFOs and finance teams, helping them move past one-off experiments into structured, measurable adoption.

Through Blend2Balance, she runs hands-on Claude training programs for finance teams of all sizes, writes Balanced AI Insights, a newsletter on AI for finance leaders, and advises companies on building AI-ready finance functions. She speaks and writes regularly on what actually works when finance teams adopt AI, and what tends to trip them up.

Matthew Gray is a business and enterprise technology executive with more than 20 years’ experience leading transformation and operating model change across retail, wholesale, distribution, regulated healthcare and insurance, and FMCG. He has held executive accountability for 8-figure operating and capital portfolios, with more than A$100M in cumulative business value realised across cost optimisation, revenue enablement, working capital improvement and operating model redesign.

Most recently, Matthew served as CIO of Metcash’s A$3.7B Independent Hardware Group, with executive accountability for technology operations, digital, data and transformation priorities across more than 600 branded locations and 2,500 independent operators. He has also held senior enterprise technology roles with Bupa ANZ and Australian Pharmaceutical Industries, where his work included portfolio optimisation, operating model redesign, governance, risk, analytics enablement and technology investment linked directly to revenue, profitability and working capital outcomes.

Matthew’s work focuses on converting enterprise strategy into executable capability through operating model design, platform and data modernisation, investment prioritisation, sourcing strategy, governance and organisational change.

Through CGX Enterprise Partners, he advises boards, founders and executive teams across Australia, Vietnam and Southeast Asia on operating model transformation, strategic sourcing and enterprise maturity.

For finance professionals, Matthew brings a practical executive lens to AI adoption: how organisations can use AI to improve leverage, insight and decision-making while preserving governance, controls, human judgement, accountability and trust.