From idle cash to active investing: How CFOs are unlocking hidden value
Economic jitters and political shifts are hitting C-suites hard right now. You’d think CFOs would just hunker down, tighten the belt, and wait for the storm to pass—standard procedure when consumers are this nervous. But the actual numbers tell a much weirder story.
Instead of locking the safe, finance leaders are actually getting more aggressive. Industry analysts are seeing a massive move away from old-school cash hoarding. As this article from Plains State Bank examines, recent industry reports confirm that these power players are pivoting toward an active, investment-heavy model, effectively betting on new tech to carry them through the current market volatility.
A Surprising Surge of Confidence
Deloitte’s latest CFO Signals survey, conducted in Q1, offers a look at this strange trend. Usually, these reports are full of talk about defensive cash-piles, but this time, investment is the focus. About 52% of the executives surveyed are still sweating internal costs and supply chain mess, but nearly half—48% specifically—are being pushed to spend big on new tech rather than just trimming the fat. It is a total rejection of the classic playbook of sitting on capital and waiting for better weather.
AI is driving a lot of this. Companies aren't just looking for shiny toys; they want process automation that actually works. The upfront costs are high, but the promise of long-term efficiency makes the expense worth it. However, they aren't buying the "agentic AI" hype just yet. Only 20% of CFOs think agentic tools are vital for their cost-management plans. Around 40% are sticking with the broader AI ecosystem because it feels safer and more predictable.
There is a clear preference for cloud-based budgeting and data analytics over "do-everything" platforms. CFOs want humans at the wheel. They aren't trying to let an algorithm run the whole show. This cautious stance shows that even with digital transformation moving fast, financial oversight is still too complex to leave entirely to a machine. These tools are being used to help human teams, not replace the strategic frameworks they have spent years building.
The survey also found a massive disconnect between the money and the company culture. CFOs are ready to invest, but the rest of the company isn't always on board. Around 38% said their corporate strategy didn't actually line up with their cost plans. Even worse, a full third of respondents said their organization has no real culture of watching costs at all. This misalignment makes "unlocking value" much harder than it looks on a spreadsheet.
Safety Still Matters
Another useful source of CFO sentiment data is the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) and its most recent Liquidity Survey from 2025. It finds that safety is the main driver of investment decisions for 61% of organizations, unsurprisingly given the aforementioned market-wide uncertainty. At the same time, this study still shows a degree of confidence, with almost 30% of companies planning to switch up investment policies in the coming year, indicating a desire to take bold action and unlock value rather than resting on their laurels.
In terms of the types of financial products that are the focal point of business investments, banks still lead the pack here. However, organizations are moving away from traditional bank products like CDs and deposits toward Money Market Fund ETFs to gain yield without sacrificing the immediate liquidity needed for rapid investment. So again, investment innovation is the name of the game, not doing things the old-fashioned way.
A Strategic Pivot Toward Long-Term Value
What’s clear from research into CFO sentiment and market movements is that financial decision-makers remain intimately familiar with where things stand and where they’re headed, both for their individual organizations and the wider economy. How they’re tackling uncertainty and disruption with active investing rather than passive cash hoarding should signal that they’re familiar with the ongoing risks as well as the opportunities that come with them.
While the scale of tech investment varies by organization size, the underlying shift toward active value creation remains a consistent theme across the corporate spectrum. Corporate CFOs at multinational organizations may possess greater leeway for aggressive tech bets, yet the objective of identifying and unlocking hidden value is increasingly prioritized by leadership at firms of all sizes as a means of navigating ongoing economic disruption.
This story was produced by Plains State Bank and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
