How to Become an AI CFO

We’re over half way through 2026 already.

So don't miss tomorrow's free Masterclass. Where I will show you how to become an AI CFO in the rest of 2026 - you will learn:

• How to reconcile a bank statement with 100s of lines against your invoices, and get 80% of the work done automatically (timing, currency, and amount differences all explained).
• How to combine messy, multi-tab credit card statements into one clean report - with spend-by-day and spend-by-quarter graphs (in under 2 minutes)
• The one Excel mode almost nobody on your team is using yet, that consolidates, audits, and fixes its own formula errors while you watch.

If you feel you are falling behind with AI, the rest of this year is your chance to catch up. So make sure to join me here (plus get the recording).
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I told you Copilot for Powerpoint was bad.
I’m taking it back

So, I need to take something back.

Last year, during a masterclass I said Copilot in PowerPoint is bad, and that you could not put its decks in front of a board.

And a lot also faced this problem.

If your company runs on Microsoft, you would sit through my Claude demos thinking "awesome, but that is not my tool."
I had one member in a live session clicking button after button in Copilot, trying to make it do what Claude did, and hitting a wall every time.

But last month, Microsoft released three updates that have made it much better.

Here they all are.

3 Microsoft Copilot Releases for Finance

1. Teach Copilot your month-end process once (a SKILL.md you @ forever)

Copilot in Excel now comes with prebuilt finance skills for variance analysis, DCF builds, and month-end close. And you can write your own in a plain text file. This is the exact idea I have been teaching in Claude for months.

Here is how to start:

1. Open Copilot in Excel and look at the pre-built skills first: browse the finance skills already in the Copilot pane before you build anything.
2. Write your process down as a SKILL.md: create a SKILL.md file in your OneDrive, in plain Markdown, describing the steps, structure, and formatting Copilot should follow.
3. Call it with an @, in any prompt: save it to OneDrive and trigger it using the @ symbol whenever you need it.
4. Plug in live data if you have the subscription: use the connector option in the Copilot pane to authenticate feeds from FactSet, S&P Global, Morningstar, and others.

2. Brand Kits: stop rebuilding your board-deck template every single month

Define your colors, fonts, logo, and voice once, and Copilot applies them to every deck it generates, automatically.

Here is how to start:

1. Get IT to name a Brand Manager first (this takes 24-72 hours): ask your admin to configure the Enterprise Brand Manager policy in the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center and assign managers via a security group.
2. Find it under Create, then More: open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, select Create, then More, then Brand Kits.
3. Give it your existing brand guide: select New Brand Kit and upload your guidelines document. Copilot extracts the colours, fonts, logos, and tone rules.
4. Review, then publish: check what it output, fix anything that doesn’t look good, and then publish it across your company.

After that, every deck Copilot builds arrives on-brand with no extra step from you. This is the manual "branding guideline Skill" I build in Claude, now working in Copilot.

3. Copilot Cowork is live now, and it runs the whole task (at $0.01 a credit)

More than half the Fortune 500 used Cowork during its preview, and in June it went fully live worldwide.

Here is how to start:

1. Get billing switched on: Confirm your Copilot licence is active, then have IT enable Cowork and set up Copilot Credits billing in the Admin Center.
2. Set a spending cap at every level: put limits at tenant, group, and user level before the first task runs, because heavy jobs use more credits.
3. Toggle to Cowork and describe the outcome, not the steps: open the Copilot app, switch to Cowork in the left nav, and tell it the job.
4. Teach it your workflow in the Customize page: add your own SKILL.md files (up to 50 per user) or install plugins from the Marketplace like LSEG, Moody's, and S&P Global.

Treat it like a junior analyst. You brief it once, properly, you review the output, and you never accept the first draft.

The One Thing To Remember

AI in Finance is becoming less about the tool, and more about the way that you use it.

1. Skills - Now exist across Claude, ChatGPT and now Copilot.
2. Branding - Now a dedicated feature in Copilot (but can also be built manually in Claude and ChatGPT).
3. Cowork - A more autonomous AI function that is goal orientated. It can think for longer, and carry out multiple steps.

Now all you’ve got to do is pick the one finance task you want to start with ;)

Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

- Nicolas

P.S. - The best way to learn from me directly is to join my weekly masterclasses. 60-mins + Q&A where I’ll get all your AI in Finance questions answered. Join me here.

P.P.S. - Ready to build your first board deck with Copilot? Here's how to make it actually impress → Build Finance Presentations with Copilot that Actually Impress Stakeholders (2026)​

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