According to Pleo, for decades, the operational model of financial departments in companies has been based on an unchangeable pattern: any procedure, spending decision, invoice or budget must without exception have human approval. However, this control mechanism, designed to mitigate risk, has become a bottleneck that stifles the growth of many companies.
According to the data from the report, 89% of financial managers in Spain feel unable to manage the growth of their companies due to bureaucratic burdens and data dispersion. All this in a context where, according to this report, 94% of companies in our country plan to expand throughout this year. Thus, the need for every relevant operation to receive the green light from a human has created a “control tax” that forces financial departments to prioritise paperwork over the actual growth of their companies.
According to Marija Nakevska, product and technology director at Pleo, “Finance has relied on the same operational model for decades: every important decision must end with a human signature. AI is about to change this definitively. Instead of relying on people to authorise each transaction, financial teams will define a set of rules to automate their work. This is not just about digitising the usual paperwork, but redesigning workflows from scratch. This allows teams to shift from manual execution to overseeing results, marking the biggest transformation in the sector since the introduction of ERPs.”
This new direction coincides with the consolidation of agentic AI in the market, which allows for decentralised financial management. Expense requests no longer require employees to use complex accounting platforms that hinder their processes, but occur directly within the tools they already work with, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, ChatGPT or Claude.
With this proposal, Pleo emphasises that the true value of Artificial Intelligence in 2026 no longer lies in the invoicing process, but in freeing professionals from repetitive tasks that consume their time, positioning them as the true architects of financial strategy and corporate governance.