Jobs / Finance and accounting
Can agents do finance and accounting work?
Accounting, auditing, financial analysis, and investment work.
- US jobs
- 3,051,320 (2.0% of employment)
- Typical wage
- $86K a year (employment-weighted mean of occupation medians)
- Occupations
- 17 in O*NET 31.0
- Evidence
- 5 benchmarks from 7 institutions
Task level
Partial
On Vals AI's Finance Agent benchmark, where agents research SEC filings to answer an analyst's questions, the best model scores 64.4%. Adjacent spreadsheet tasks score higher (83.1% on SpreadsheetBench). No task-level benchmark in our collection tests bookkeeping or audit work inside accounting systems.
Evidence: Finance Agent Benchmark, SpreadsheetBench — by Renmin University of China and Vals AI. Reading dated 23 Sep 2026.
Agents succeed on some scoped tasks. Reliable or end-to-end work is not shown.
Project level
Partial
On APEX-Agents, which includes investment-banking tasks written by professionals, the best agent passes 73.5% of tasks on the first try (all domains). OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's GDPval deliverables, from occupations that include accountants and financial managers, won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons.
Evidence: APEX-Agents, GDPval, GDPval-AA — by Artificial Analysis, Box, Harvey, Mercor, and OpenAI. Reading dated 23 Sep 2026.
Agents succeed on some scoped tasks. Reliable or end-to-end work is not shown.
Benchmarks for this work
Also relevant
These benchmarks cover part of this family's work.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Functions: Financial analysisConsulting workLegal workProfessional deliverablesWeb researchSpreadsheet work
What we do not know
- Benchmarks measure tasks, not whole jobs. A job is a bundle of tasks, judgment, and relationships.
- Capability is not adoption. A task that agents can do in a benchmark may still be done by people at work.
- Most results come from single runs. Reliability over many runs is often unknown.
Occupations in this family
Sorted by US employment (BLS OEWS May 2025). O*NET sub-occupations share the employment figure of their SOC group.
| Occupation | SOC | US jobs |
|---|---|---|
| Accountants and Auditors | 13-2011.00 | 1.4M |
| Financial and Investment Analysts | 13-2051.00 | 362K |
| Loan Officers | 13-2072.00 | 274K |
| Personal Financial Advisors | 13-2052.00 | 267K |
| Financial Quantitative Analysts | 13-2099.01 | (132K group) |
| Financial Specialists, All Other | 13-2099.00 | 132K |
| Fraud Examiners, Investigators and Analysts | 13-2099.04 | (132K group) |
| Insurance Underwriters | 13-2053.00 | 105K |
| Tax Preparers | 13-2082.00 | 76K |
| Financial Examiners | 13-2061.00 | 68K |
| Credit Analysts | 13-2041.00 | 64K |
| Financial Risk Specialists | 13-2054.00 | 64K |
| Tax Examiners and Collectors, and Revenue Agents | 13-2081.00 | 57K |
| Budget Analysts | 13-2031.00 | 47K |
| Credit Counselors | 13-2071.00 | 28K |
| Appraisers and Assessors of Real Estate | 13-2023.00 | — |
| Appraisers of Personal and Business Property | 13-2022.00 | — |
How to cite
Credit the original work first: the benchmarks listed on this page, and their institutions.
Then, if you used this page:
Can Agents Work. "Can agents do finance and accounting work?." https://canagentswork.com/jobs/finance-accounting/ (accessed 2026-09-24). CC BY 4.0.@misc{caw-jobs-finance-accounting,
title = {{Can agents do finance and accounting work?}},
author = {{Can Agents Work}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://canagentswork.com/jobs/finance-accounting/}},
note = {Accessed 2026-09-24. CC BY 4.0}
}