For years, finance and accounting organizations have focused their transformation efforts on efficiency. They have automated transactions, standardized processes, and accelerated close cycles. Those investments have paid off. Finance runs faster than ever. 

Risk management, however, has not kept the same pace. 

That imbalance is the focus of new independent research from Everest Group, which examines how finance risk is evolving and why traditional approaches are increasingly strained in modern enterprises. In its latest report, Everest Group introduces and defines an emerging category it calls Finance Risk Intelligence (FRI). This category responds to a growing gap between how finance operates today and how risk is still managed.  

A growing gap between finance and risk 

One of the most important observations in the report is that finance risk has quietly become more complex, more distributed, and harder to see. 

Enterprises now process enormous volumes of transactions across multiple ERPs, geographies, and business models. Automation has reduced manual effort, but it has also increased scale. As a result, small errors, misconfigurations, or policy gaps can quickly turn into meaningful exposure. At the same time, regulatory scrutiny and expectations around transparency continue to rise. 

Everest Group describes the result as a widening risk gap. Efficiency has improved, but visibility and control have not. In this environment, relying on periodic audits, sampling, and after-the-fact reviews means organizations often react to issues long after impact has occurred.  

In real-world enterprise environments, this gap is often measurable. Oversight data shows that traditional audit and sampling approaches typically review only a small fraction of total transactions, while continuous monitoring models can extend coverage to over 95% of total spend across finance operations. 

Why reactive controls are reaching their limits 

The report is clear that the challenge is not a lack of effort or intent. Finance teams are doing what they have always done to manage risk. They test controls, review exceptions, and investigate anomalies once they surface. 

The problem is structural. 

Reactive approaches are inherently retrospective. They look backward, cover only a portion of transactions, and sit outside the daily flow of finance work. As transaction volumes grow and processes become more automated, these methods struggle to keep up. Risk is identified late, response is manual, and lessons learned are often difficult to apply at scale. 

Scale is a central factor. Across Oversight’s customer base, finance exception processing volumes grew by 656% between January 2024 and June 2025, highlighting how quickly transaction complexity can outpace retrospective review models. 

Everest Group’s research makes a clear case that this model is no longer sufficient for the pace and complexity of modern finance.  

From hindsight to intelligence 

What stands out in the research is not only its critique of traditional risk management, but the shift it validates. 

Rather than treating risk as something to be reviewed periodically, Everest Group points to the emergence of Finance Risk Intelligence. This approach centers on continuous monitoring, contextual insight, and earlier intervention. The focus shifts from asking what went wrong to understanding what is happening now and what is likely to happen next. 

In practical terms, this means applying analytics and AI directly to transaction flows, identifying anomalies and behavioral patterns as they emerge, and enabling action while there is still time to prevent loss or disruption. In environments already applying these principles, machine learning–driven risk models are achieving 96–98% accuracy in identifying low-risk activity, enabling teams to resolve a growing share of exceptions earlier and with greater confidence. 

Why this is more than a new tool 

A key takeaway from the report is that Finance Risk Intelligence is not simply another feature added to existing systems. It represents a broader change in how finance risk is positioned within the organization. 

Risk moves closer to operations. Intelligence replaces static reporting. Control becomes continuous rather than periodic. In this model, finance risk is no longer a back-office function focused only on compliance. It becomes a capability that supports resilience, foresight, and trust across the enterprise. 

Everest Group positions FRI as an intelligence layer that works alongside existing ERPs and finance platforms, strengthening them rather than replacing them. This reinforces that the shift is architectural and organizational, not just technological.  

What finance leaders should be thinking about now 

For CFOs, controllers, audit leaders, and shared services executives, the implications of this research are significant. 

As finance continues to scale, the question is no longer whether risk will surface, but when it will surface and how quickly it can be detected and addressed. The report encourages leaders to think beyond audits and controls testing and to consider how continuous intelligence could change their ability to see risk earlier, understand it in context, and act with confidence. 

This is why Everest Group frames Finance Risk Intelligence as a category-level shift. It reflects how leading organizations are already rethinking financial control in response to growing complexity and rising expectations. 

Oversight’s perspective 

At Oversight, we have long believed that effective finance risk management depends on visibility, pattern recognition, and timely action. Hindsight alone is not enough. Everest Group’s research puts structure and language around that belief and helps explain why many finance teams are reexamining how they approach risk today. 

In practice, finance teams applying intelligence-driven approaches are already seeing measurable change. Oversight customers have reduced manual audit effort by 50–70%, while maintaining accuracy levels above 95% and expanding oversight across millions of transactions. These outcomes help explain why Financial Risk Intelligence is moving rapidly from concept to operational reality. 

Explore the full research 

This article highlights only a portion of Everest Group’s findings. 

The full report explores how Finance Risk Intelligence works in practice, where it delivers value across the finance lifecycle, and how the market is evolving as this category matures. 

Download the full Everest Group Finance Risk Intelligence analyst report to read the complete analysis and perspective.