Ask anyone who runs a finance function in a small or medium-sized business how much of the week is genuinely strategic, and you tend to get a wry answer.

The forecasting, the cash-flow planning, the conversations with the board: that is the work that matters. But it sits behind a wall of admin. There are invoices to raise, statements to reconcile, supplier bills to key in, and month-end reports to assemble by hand.

For years that admin was simply the cost of doing business, and someone usually typed the numbers in. What has changed is not the work itself but the tools available to absorb it. A finance team in 2026 has practical, affordable ways to take the most repetitive tasks off the desk entirely, and a growing number are doing exactly that.

 The admin tax that finance teams have stopped accepting

Every finance function pays what you might call an admin tax. It is the slice of each week that goes on tasks that are necessary but add no insight. Re-keying a supplier invoice does not make the business better informed, and matching bank-feed lines against the ledger does not change the cash position. The work has to happen, but it generates no advantage.

The reason teams have started to push back is partly cost and partly risk. Manual processes are slow, but they are also where errors creep in. A transposed figure, a missed invoice or a duplicate payment each costs time to find and credibility to explain. So automating the routine layer is as much about accuracy and control as it is about speed. There is also a quieter motivation, which is retention. Finance staff who spend their days on data entry tend not to stay, but give them genuinely analytical work and the role becomes one people want to keep.

Invoicing and accounts payable: the obvious place to begin

If you are choosing one process to automate first, start where the volume is highest and the rules are clearest. For most SMEs that means invoicing on the way out and accounts payable on the way in. On the sales side, the well-trodden ground includes raising and sending invoices straight from your accounting system, chasing overdue payments with automatic reminders, and reconciling receipts against the bank feed. The software is mature and the payback is immediate.

Accounts payable is the higher-value target. Supplier bills arrive as PDFs and email attachments in no consistent format, so keying them in by hand is slow and error-prone. Modern tools can read an incoming invoice, extract the supplier, amount, date and line items, and post it to the ledger for a human to approve rather than to type. The person stays in the loop where judgement is needed and is removed from the part that is pure transcription.

Reconciliation, the task nobody volunteers for

Bank reconciliation is the work finance teams most want to hand over, and with good reason. It is repetitive, it is unforgiving of small errors, and it expands to fill whatever time month-end allows. Reconciliation is also unusually well suited to automation, because most of it follows consistent patterns. A large share of transactions match cleanly against the ledger and can be cleared automatically, so only the genuine exceptions need a human eye.

A sensible setup does precisely that. It surfaces the handful of items that do not reconcile so the team spends its attention on the discrepancies that actually matter. Done well, the value is twofold. Month-end gets faster, and the numbers become more current. When reconciliation is continuous rather than a monthly scramble, the business is always working from a near-live picture of its cash position.

 Reporting that assembles itself

The monthly reporting pack is where a great deal of skilled time quietly disappears. Someone exports figures, pastes them into a spreadsheet, formats the tables, builds the commentary and circulates the result. By the time the board reads it, the data is weeks old.

Automating the assembly of routine reports changes the rhythm. Management accounts, cash-flow summaries and the standard board pack can be generated on a schedule, pulling from live data so the figures are current the moment they land. The finance team’s role shifts from building the report to interpreting it, explaining what the numbers mean and what should happen next.

This is where automation pays its most strategic dividend. The bottleneck in most finance functions is not the analysis; it is getting to the point where analysis can begin. For organisations weighing up where to start, a clear-eyed assessment of AI finance automation and how it fits an existing accounting system is a more useful first step than chasing the longest feature list.

What good automation actually looks like

What separates a sound finance-automation project from an expensive one is worth being precise about, because the difference is not the technology.

It works with your accounting platform, not around it. If you run Xero or a comparable system, automation should connect to it directly rather than bolting on a parallel process people have to remember to maintain.

• It keeps a human at every decision point. Software should handle transcription and matching; people should approve payments. Approval is a control, not a delay to engineer away.
• It leaves a clear audit trail. Every automated action should be logged and reviewable. Your auditors, and your own peace of mind, depend on seeing what happened and why.
• It starts narrow. The most successful projects automate one well-understood process, prove it, then expand. Trying to transform everything at once is how budgets and patience both run out.
• It is honest about exceptions. No process is fully predictable. Good automation handles routine cases confidently and routes the unusual ones to a person, rather than forcing every case through the same template.

A project that meets these tests tends to deliver. One that ignores them tends to become the thing the team works around.

Turning a cost centre into a thinking function

The finance teams getting the most from automation are not the ones with the biggest software budgets. They are the ones who looked honestly at their week, identified the tasks that consumed time without producing insight, and removed those tasks deliberately, one at a time, starting with the highest-volume work. The destination is worth being clear about. It is not a finance function with fewer people, but one where the people spend their hours on the work only they can do: understanding the numbers, spotting the risks, and helping the business decide where to go next. The admin tax was always optional, and more and more finance teams have simply decided to stop paying it.

Katsuyuki Tajiri
Group CFO, Deputy President & Representative Executive Officer

Hello. This is Tajiri, Group CFO of Sompo Holdings. Thank you all for joining us today. I’ll be walking you through what we have disclosed today, full year results for FY 2025, full year forecast for FY 2026 and the shareholder return. I will just give you main points. I will take questions after the explanation.

So without further ado, please turn to Page 3. It says executive summary. This page captures the highlights of today’s presentation. Starting with FY 2025, we delivered growth across all business segments. Profitability gains at Sompo P&C, in particular, were the driver of the group profit, lifting adjusted consolidated profit to JPY 535.2 billion, up JPY 211.8 billion year-on-year and a new all-time high. Notably, this means we have achieved our FY 2030 target of JPY 500 billion, well ahead of schedule. Looking ahead to FY 2026, our adjusted consolidated profit on the nat cat and other normalized basis is projected to grow by further JPY 62.4 billion, again, reaching a record high.

The key growth drivers are continued profitability improvements in domestic P&C, along with meaningful earnings contribution from consolidation of Aspen in our overseas insurance business. Our shareholder returns, we remain

The best offer you can make a new customer is one where all the risk sits with you. It sounds obvious, but most businesses hedge. They ask for a card upfront, bury the exit in small print, or make the trial so limited it proves nothing.

Online casinos have been doing this better than almost anyone.

In a market with hundreds of platforms competing for the same players, operators who survived long-term built their entire acquisition strategy around one principle: let people experience the product first, with real stakes, using the operator’s money.

Ownership is Everything

Once someone has used a product and found value in it, the prospect of losing access feels worse than the cost of paying. That psychological shift is the engine behind every effective trial model, and it is why the no deposit bonus became standard practice across the online casino industry.

Players receive free credits or spins with no deposit required, they explore the platform on the operator’s dime, and the ones who enjoy it convert. The ones who don’t were never going to stay anyway. That is not a loss; it is the model working correctly.

The conversion logic is simple. Someone who has navigated a platform, found games they like, and had a real experience is a fundamentally different prospect than someone reading a banner ad. The trust is already partly built before any money changes hands.

It was Acquisition That Drove Change

Casino operators work in one of the most expensive paid media environments in digital marketing. Cost-per-click is high, competition is relentless, and players churn fast if the platform doesn’t deliver immediately. Those conditions forced operators to get precise about what they were actually spending per converted customer, and whether that number made sense against lifetime value.

The no-deposit trial gave them a predictable answer. They know what a free spin costs to offer, they know redemption rates, and they can compare the lifetime value of a player who came in through a trial offer versus one acquired through paid search. For business owners in other sectors, that kind of acquisition clarity is worth building toward.

Transparent Terms Improve Conversion Rates

A headline offer with opaque conditions is worse than a modest offer with honest terms. Early casino bonuses often had wagering requirements so steep that players felt misled even after enjoying the product, which eroded trust faster than any competitor could.

The platforms that built lasting businesses made their trial terms legible. Players could see exactly what was required to withdraw, which games counted, what the ceiling was. That transparency converted better long-term because it removed the anxiety that something was being hidden.

The same principle transfers to any sector. A trial that is hard to cancel or structured to trap users signals exactly the wrong thing about the product behind it. If the product is good, the exit should be easy.

A Lesson to Others

SaaS, retail, hospitality, and professional services all use versions of this model now, but most arrived at it later and with less precision than the casino industry did. The competitive pressure in that market forced a level of iteration that other sectors rarely experience.

If acquisition costs are climbing and cold-channel conversion is disappointing, the question is whether you are confident enough in your product to let it make the case for itself, risk-free, in front of someone who owes you nothing yet.

The Bottom Line

The no-risk trial works because it is a statement of confidence, not a discount. The businesses that execute it well are not afraid of users who leave after the trial. They are building toward the ones who stay, and those customers, the ones who experienced the product and chose to commit, are worth considerably more than anything a paid channel delivers.

U.S. President Donald Trump has lashed out at allies for not doing more to support the United States’ war effort in Iran, whose chokehold on the strait has crippled international shipping and sent energy prices soaring. In March, Trump told NATO allies to “go get your own oil” and secure the strait themselves.

On the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, the U.K.’s Royal Navy is preparing to do that – but only once a peace agreement is reached. Trump said Saturday that a deal with Iran has been “largely negotiated” after calls with Israel and other allies in the region, but it still needs finalizing.

Britain’s Armed Forces Minister Al Carns took a small group of reporters to visit the RFA Lyme Bay as it prepares for a possible international operation, led by the U.K. and France, to secure the strait. As Carns spoke, the amphibious landing vessel, docked at the gateway to the Mediterranean, was being loaded with ammunition and mine-hunting sea drones equipped with sonar.

With a crew of several hundred sailors, the RFA Lyme Bay will soon depart Gibraltar to link up with the U.K. destroyer HMS Dragon and allied ships for air support before sailing through the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf.

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“Which other country can pull together 40 nations and come up with a solution to deal with a complex problem that we couldn’t predict because we weren’t involved?” asked Carns, responding to a question from The Associated Press about what Trump wants from his British ally.
After the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the strait, a key waterway for the region’s oil, natural gas and fertilizer, causing global economic pain. The U.K. in particular has drawn the ire of Trump, who has described Britain’s navy as “toys” and Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “not Winston Churchill.”At least 6,000 ships have been blocked from passing through the strait since the conflict began, Carns said.

There could be a range of threats from Iran’s mines

Iran could have a “huge” variety of mines throughout strait, said Cmdr. Gemma Britton, who is in charge of the Royal Navy’s Mine and Threat Exploitation Group. Mines could be rocket-propelled, cabled or sit on the seabed and be triggered by sound, movement or light.

AP was shown autonomous systems that can scan the seabed and the water with sonar in about half the time it takes for a crewed vessel to enter and map potential dangers. The sea drones equipped with sonar produce a picture of objects under the water, from fishing traps to pipelines. The picture is used to identify mines that can be explored with advanced acoustic systems and cameras, Britton said.

Some of the systems on the RFA Lyme Bay can be loaded onto a smaller vessel that can be launched and piloted autonomously from the ship, which acts as a mother ship, waiting outside any potential minefield, Britton said. That reduces the number of people needed to enter, she said.

Once a mine has been located, a diver with explosives normally places a charge on the mine before swimming away to detonate it. But RFA Lyme Bay is trialing a remotely operated vehicle that dives and drops a charge by a mine before setting it off, Britton said.

The priority, she said, will be to clear a transit lane in the strait to allow around 700 ships to leave. A lane flowing in the opposite direction will then be cleared, allowing ships to enter, she said, but added that clearing the entire strait could take months or years.

It’s still not clear if the UK and its allies will be deployed

It’s still not clear if any mines are in the strait – or if the U.K. and its allies will be deploying to remove them.

A U.S. official speaking on condition on anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters told the AP that the U.S. has not found or destroyed any mines in the strait, nor have any ships been damaged. Commercial traffic has quietly continued to flow, though at a much lower volume than before the conflict.

When asked by the AP if the British effort was partly for show, to curry favor with the U.S., Carns said he was sure some mines had been blown up or floated away but that assurance is not good enough for commercial insurance companies. He said those companies need “absolute certainty” to get vessels traveling through the strait again.

“That’s what this capability will provide,” he said.

The international effort to secure the strait would happen only once hostilities are over.

“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump said Saturday on social media, with no details on timing.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that a deal has been described as close.

“We don’t know when the Americans, Iranians and Israelis are going to come up with a suitable solution,” Carns said.

In the meantime, the RFA Lyme Bay and its crew will be waiting and will be “really, really ready,” Carns said.

The report examined 310 local authorities across England and Wales

Bristol is the best place in the South West to be a buy-to-let landlord, new research has revealed. The city tops the regional ranking in a new property index examining 310 local authorities across England and Wales.

The report, by property investment firm ERE, measured average property prices, annual rental yield, five-year property price growth, private-rented sector share, and average monthly rent.

Bristol ranked first in the West Country with an annual rental return of 6.5 per cent – the second-highest of any local authority in the country, behind only Newcastle upon Tyne. The average property in Bristol now costs £346,796 and 26.2 per cent of households rent privately, according to the report.

The South West city was named the 14th best-performing in the UK.

In second place on the regional list was Plymouth, with an average property price of £217,671 and the strongest five-year price growth in the South West top 10 at 24.8 per cent.

Gloucester came in third with an average property price of £238,506 and an annual return of 5.5 per cent, while Exeter ranked fourth with the second-highest private rented sector share in the regional top five at 24.9 per cent. Bath and North East Somerset meanwhile placed fifth.

Helen Mercer-Jones, managing director at ERE Property , said: “London is no longer the default choice for the modern landlord.

“With only one London borough even making the top 50, our research highlights a massive geographic pivot in the UK property market. For those seeking returns above six per cent or seven per cent, the smart money is moving North to cities that offer both lower barriers to entry and a much higher ceiling for rental growth.”

At the other end of the regional table, South Hams in Devon ranked last of the South West’s 25 local authorities, with an annual return of 3.46 per cent on an average property price of £345,188. East Devon, Forest of Dean, Cotswold and Stroud completed the regional bottom five.

Across the wider UK index, the strongest performers were concentrated in the north of England, with seven of the top 10 areas in the North West or North East.

Manchester took first place nationally with an annual return of 6.4 per cent and a property price below the UK average. Newcastle upon Tyne was ranked second – and the only local authority in the country to deliver an annual return above seven per cent, while Blackpool was third with the cheapest average property price among the top 10 at £136,609.

Just one London borough – Newham at 38th place – made the top 50, while Kensington and Chelsea finishes last of the 310 areas, with the highest average property price in the country and a price tag that has fallen by 10.5 per cent over the past five years.

The South West’s top 10 buy-to-let areas and average property prices

Source: ERE Property

1. Bristol, £346,796

2. Plymouth, £217,671

3. Gloucester, £238,506

4. Exeter, £285,699

5. Bath and North East Somerset, £399,351

6. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, £306,533

7. Torbay, £230,232

8. Swindon, £256,238

9. South Gloucestershire, £333,391

10. Cheltenham, £331,125

Market Review

Munis declined slightly. U.S. investment-grade bonds, including municipal bonds (munis), declined slightly in the quarter. Surging interest rates in March largely drove the quarter’s decline. The volatile period included renewed tariff concerns, a Federal Reserve policy pause, mixed economic data, war