Accounting and auditing in the age of AI.
A field map. The tools. The benchmarks. What it means for the profession.
How many of you have used ChatGPT or Claude for finance work this week?
Hands up.
What you'll get in 45 minutes
Three things, in this order.
A quick note on us
Accord Partners is building the first AI-powered audit firm in MENA.
We partner with established Saudi audit firms. The partner keeps signing, keeps the relationship, drives the vision. We bring three things underneath.
Backed by Raed Ventures · P1 Ventures · DPI Venture Capital · Foundation Ventures.
Global · finance & reporting · 2024 → 2027
Companies piloting or using AI in financial reporting today, projected within three years.
Saudi Arabia · the forcing functions
Three reasons Saudi will not wait — and one principle.
Part one of three
The capabilities.
Six layers. Each does something the layer below cannot.
From browser to autonomous agent
Six layers. Pick the right one for the work.
Layer 01 · Chat in a browser
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.
Open the tab. Paste the question. Read the answer. Frontier reasoning models now pass all three CFA exam levels.
Quick research. Drafting memos. Explaining a standard. Translating jargon. Brainstorming a risk list. Free, or near it.
Hallucinates on numbers. No memory of your client. No access to your working papers. No audit trail. Anything you paste in, leaves your control.
IFRS 15 · Saudi construction · 30% advance on a 3-year project
Layer 02 · Workspace integrations
Claude Plugin for Excel. Microsoft Copilot. Google Sheets Gemini.
AI inside the tool you already work in. Reads your workbook — every tab, every formula dependency — then explains, audits, or updates it with cell-level citations.
Variance analysis. Formula audits across nested tabs. Updating assumptions without breaking dependencies. Multi-tab models built in a single prompt — see next slide.
Audit-grade accountability. Engagement-level memory across files. SOCPA workpaper templates. Still costs ~$20–$30 per user per month on top of Excel.
3-year financial model for a fictitious Saudi restaurant chain · 8 tabs · fully formula-linked · built in one prompt
Layer 03 · Autonomous agents
Claude Cowork.
Point it at a folder, give it a brief. It reads, drafts, and produces the file — with you in the loop.
Drafts reports, reconciliations, memos. Connects to Excel, Google Sheets, Drive, Outlook — the tools your finance team already runs on. No code required.
Newer than the coding agents. Permission boundaries still being learned. Best for tasks where you can verify the output. Not yet a substitute for a partner's review.
For advanced users: Claude Code and OpenAI Codex remain the heavy-duty coding agents — the same family of tool, sitting one rung deeper.
Anthropic's desktop app, today · Opus 4.7
One brief in — a bilingual CFO dashboard out
Bonus · from artifact to product
From a file to a product. Use Replit.
Trade-off: slightly more technical, especially when connecting live data securely (auth, secrets, permissions). Start with mock data, then graduate.
Layer 04 · Finance-specific agents
Claude for Financial Services. OpenAI + PwC. Thomson Reuters CoCounsel.
Purpose-built for finance. Trained on filings. Connected to authoritative content (FASB, IFRS, IRS).
Layer 05 · Vertical AI tools
DataSnipper. Trullion. Vic.ai.
Software built for one audit or finance workflow, done deeply. The point solutions partners already buy.
A look at each, then the trade-off →
Layer 03 · Vertical AI tools · in production today
Layer 03 · Vertical AI tools · in production today
Layer 03 · Vertical AI tools · in production today
Vertical AI tools · the trade-off
Some do one job. Others claim the whole audit.
Speed on a single workflow. AP automation. Sample testing. IFRS 15 revenue recognition. Bought and bolted in within days, not months. Trullion is now positioning as the audit platform itself.
Each tool sees only its slice — and most serve other markets. Built for US/EU firms first. Arabic and SOCPA workpaper support is thin. No shared memory across your engagement. Three vendors, three contracts, three logins.
Layer 06 · Proprietary audit platforms
Built ground-up. Owned by the firm. Not for sale.
The Big 10 are making bigger investments in AI globally every quarter. We are doing it for Saudi.
Inside Accord OS
Workflows plus agents. Both, not either.
Accord OS has two halves. One half is the engine. The other half is the team.
Workflow without agents is software. Agents without a workflow are toys. Combined, they are the next-generation audit and accounting firm.
Named roles. Real engagements.
Four of many agents we run today. Each does the work of a person.
Part two of three
The benchmarks.
Hard numbers. Which models actually win, on which finance task.
Chartered Financial Analyst exam · Dec 2025
CFA Levels I, II and III — passed by frontier reasoning models. Some clear all three with near-perfect scores.
Human CFA Level III pass rate: 56%. AI completed Level III essays in minutes. Source: Columbia / RPI / UNC, December 2025. Models tested: OpenAI o4-mini, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, Anthropic Claude Opus 4.
May 2026 · Public benchmarks
Different tasks. Different winners.
| Task | Winner | Score | Runner-up | Score | Human |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FinanceBench (10-K Q&A) | OpenAI o3 | ~90% | GPT-5 | ~88% | — |
| Finance Agent (analyst tasks) | Claude Opus 4.7 | 64.4% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 63.3% | — |
| FinQA (table reasoning) | Fin-R1* | 76.0% | GPT-4.1 | ~68% | 91% |
| CFA Level I | Gemini 3.0 Pro | 97.6% | GPT-5 | 96.1% | 43% pass |
| CFA Level III essay | Gemini 3.0 Pro | 92.0% | Claude Opus | ~75% | 56% pass |
| DocVQA (document images) | Claude Opus 4.7 | 93.8% | GPT-5.4 | 91.1% | ~95% |
| Arabic reasoning (MMMLU) | Claude Mythos | 92.7% | Gemini 3.1 Pro | ~91% | — |
*Fin-R1 = open-source finance reasoning model (Alibaba). All other rows are general-purpose frontier models. Scores from Vals AI, awesomeagents.ai, arxiv:2512.08270, MindStudio (May 2026).
What the benchmarks tell us
Three patterns. Each changes how you should staff.
A practical cheat sheet
Pick the model that fits the job.
| If you need to… | Use | Why it wins |
|---|---|---|
| Research a standard, draft a memo, translate jargon | Claude Opus 4.7 · GPT-5.5 | Best at long-form reasoning and clear English/Arabic writing. |
| Ask questions of a 10-K, audited financials, ZATCA filing | OpenAI o3 · GPT-5 | Top of FinanceBench for filings Q&A. Strong citation discipline. |
| Audit a workbook — formulas, tabs, dependencies | Claude Plugin for Excel | Reads multi-tab workbooks with cell-level citations. |
| Read scanned working papers, invoices, contracts | Claude Opus 4.7 | Best on document images and OCR (DocVQA 93.8%). |
| Study for the CPA, CFA, SOCPA, ACCA exam | Gemini 3.0 Pro | Highest scores on certification exams across the board. |
| Work in Arabic — explain, summarise, draft | Claude (latest) · Gemini 3.x | Best Arabic reasoning today. Still verify numbers. |
| Production audit work on a client engagement | Proprietary platform | None of the above alone. You need workflow + audit trail + partner sign-off. |
Rule of thumb: open with the cheapest model that fits, escalate if the answer feels thin. Always cross-check numbers against the source.
Part three of three
What this means for the profession.
The shape of the next decade. What students must learn. What practitioners must do this quarter.
Three forces, one profession
The numbers are not subtle.
What goes to AI · what stays human
Your day rearranges. The job does not disappear.
The bar moves up. Junior typing becomes senior judgment. The work is more intellectually demanding, not less.
If you are starting out · three tips
Your career does not shrink. It shifts.
If you run a firm · three tips
Modernising alone is harder than modernising with us.
Now
Questions.
Your questions are usually smarter than my answers.
Before we end
By 2027, AI will sit inside every accounting and audit task.
Adoption is no longer the question. The question is who can read the AI's work — the prompts, the pushback, the proof.