If there’s one thing financial professionals never run short of, it’s paperwork. From tax forms and receipts to financial reports and engagement letters — documents drive nearly every task. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find another industry whose workers and workflows rely on PDFs, spreadsheets, and other documents as extensively and frequently as financial services.

In our recent Adobe Document Cloud Survey, we examined common PDF and broader document usage behavior among financial professionals. This includes their perceptions of AI and generative AI, and the integration of these technologies into their workstream. Read on to discover what we found.

PDF use is nearly universal.

PDFs have long been the bellwether of document standards for their compatibility, security, and versatility, and in the financial industry this is no exception. Almost all financial professionals (98%), from CPAs and CFAs to CFPs and FRMs (and nearly every other designation in between), actively edit, sign, combine, convert, and collaborate with PDFs — and more than one-third do so very frequently (11 times or more a month).

In fact, we discovered that:

The ability to scan and secure documents is a priority.

Beyond PDFs, when it comes to broader document use, more financial professionals prioritize the ability to scan and secure them above all else — and 1 in 3 do so very frequently (11 times or more per month). However, the document creation landscape remains significantly fragmented — 9 in 10 (89%) financial professionals rely on multiple tools to create documents, with 76% using either two or three tools.

We uncovered that:

Interestingly, there appears to be an experiential divide when it comes to using designer support to finalize documents. Directors or higher are more likely than junior counterparts to take advantage of this collaboration on a high proportion of their documents. Overall, nearly all (96%) financial professionals believe at least some of their documents would benefit from designer input — 45% believe more than half of their documents would benefit, while only 4% believe none of their documents would benefit.

The compliance challenge behind financial documents.

Financial services is one of the most heavily regulated industries with stringent local, state, federal, and international standards that dictate everything from document signatures to storage. Unsurprisingly, 95% of financial professionals create or use documents that need to meet regulatory requirements at least once a month, with an average of 14 times a month. Additionally, we found that:

Generative AI has accelerated workflows, but concerns persist.

Emerging technologies, such as AI and generative AI, continue to reimagine how the work gets done, even in industries traditionally seen as slow adopters. More than 8 in 10 financial professionals (83%) have used generative AI at work with nearly half (43%) using it regularly. Directors or above reported higher and more consistent use of AI than junior counterparts, who are often viewed as more tech-savvy or tech-native.

While most financial professionals are optimistic about AI’s benefits — helping speed up workflows (86%) and communicate complex ideas more clearly through visuals (84%) — it isn’t without apprehensions. More than half (54%) said their company lacks defined rules around the use of AI at work — 8 in 10 (84%) are at least slightly concerned about privacy and security risks of using AI tools, and 4 in 10 (38%) are worried AI will make their work redundant.

 Empowering finance teams with secure AI.

With Acrobat Studio, financial professionals can maximize their productivity through Acrobat’s suite of collaboration features and secure generative AI.

• Convert, edit, and sign with Acrobat Pro.

• Quickly get insights across multiple files at once with Acrobat AI Assistant.

• Create polished content in Adobe Express without the need for a designer or design skills.

Adobe Digital Insights (ADI) has been a leader in tracking the global digital economy since 2013, offering the most comprehensive analysis of its kind based on trillions of visits and billions of transactions across the web. With this breadth and depth of data, ADI is uniquely positioned to understand the economy, customer journey, and use of creative AI and is focused on providing creators, consumers, marketers, and people in general with context for their digital creative and commercial lives. Just as ADI derives insights from Adobe Analytics and Experience Cloud data, the team is beginning to understand the generative creative world through survey sources and analysis of the prompts that have been used to generate more than 22 billion AI assets in Adobe Firefly.

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