Will AI Replace Finance Jobs in Puerto Rico? Here’s What to Do in 2025

Will AI replace finance jobs in Puerto Rico in 2025? Island data say transformation is already here: the V2A Consulting survey: 84% of Puerto Rico organizations applying AI, while the 2025 Digital Trends Study on Puerto Rico digital spending and mobile usage reports $1.82B in online sales with more than 1.5 million shoppers - mobile devices reach 98% of consumers who spend an average 5.1 hours a day on their phones, making AI tools hard to avoid.

Rather than instant layoffs, the evidence points to task automation and new analytics demands plus a clear skills gap; practical, job-focused training - such as Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - is a concrete way for finance professionals to keep pace by learning prompts, tool workflows, and applied AI across business functions.

“A significant 84% of local organizations report having applied AI in at least one business function. More importantly, results suggest that AI is starting to deliver value to Puerto Rican organizations.”

How AI is reshaping finance work in Puerto Rico shows up first in accounts payable: automation and AI are moving AP from a back-office bottleneck into a cash-management hub that helps optimize working capital, enforce e‑invoicing compliance, and speed cross‑team collaboration, just as Serrala's 2025 AP trends describe - from dynamic discounting to AI-driven data quality and tighter ERP integrations (Serrala 2025 accounts payable trends report).

Island finance teams can expect the same technical building blocks: OCR and ML to capture invoices, AI analytics to flag anomalies and forecast cash flow, and supplier self‑service portals that cut routine queries.

Industry metrics back this shift: roughly 75% of AP organizations use some form of AI today, OCR is in about 55% of deployments, and 68% use AI analytics to improve processing and fraud detection - meaning Puerto Rico's finance shops can aim for far fewer manual touches and faster payments by adopting these tools (Tungsten Automation AI in accounts payable metrics (Ardent Partners)).

So what?

Fewer paper piles and more real‑time cash decisions - a practical leverage point for CFOs navigating 2025's tighter margins.

Which finance roles in Puerto Rico face the sharpest exposure to AI in 2025 is less a binary “job or no job” question and more a task‑level reality: experts at Tech Day Puerto Rico pointed to Goldman Sachs' finding that roughly one‑fourth of current work tasks could be automated, and that office & administrative functions, legal services and engineering may see upward of 40% of tasks at risk - a pattern that maps to many finance teams where routine data entry, reconciliations and standard reporting are already being automated (see the Tech Day Puerto Rico AI job disruption coverage).

Specific vulnerable roles named locally include customer service reps, junior programmers and legal assistants, and even finance‑adjacent roles like stockbrokers; meanwhile island firms are adopting AI rapidly (about V2A Consulting 2024 survey on AI adoption in Puerto Rico), which raises the real risk that junior and transactional tasks will disappear faster than whole senior roles.

The practical takeaway: expect fewer manual touches and more emphasis on analytics, judgment, and auditability - imagine weeks of reconciliations collapsing into a few confidence‑scored clicks, freeing humans for exceptions and strategy.

“Jobs in the future will always require a human component,” he said.

For finance assistants and junior staff across Puerto Rico, AI is less about instant replacement and more about a shift from keystrokes to judgment: modern invoice capture and OCR tools turn PDFs and paper into structured records, so AP clerks spend more time reviewing exceptions and supplier questions than typing totals (see Microsoft Invoice Capture overview for Accounts Payable automation which maps the AP clerk and InvoiceCaptureOperator roles), while platforms like Stampli use adaptive “Billy the Bot” workflows to learn formats and suggest coding so a single scan and a few clicks can replace repetitive entry (Stampli guide to automated invoice capture and workflow automation).

That change means juniors will need stronger exception‑management, supplier‑portal and audit‑trail skills, plus comfort working with no‑code approval flows and confidence scores from AI - the same capabilities Ivalua highlights for routing exceptions, tax compliance and real‑time tracking (Ivalua automated invoice processing for exception routing and tax compliance).

The payoff: fewer paper delays, faster payments to vendors, and meaningful time reclaimed for learning analytics and controls instead of repetitive data entry.

“Before, we were scanning invoices, supervisors were printing them, signing them and scanning them back... Now with one scan and a few clicks, I can have an invoice entered, packing slip attached and an approval within minutes! Stampli saves me TIME and EFFORT!”

For finance professionals in Puerto Rico the practical upskilling roadmap in 2025 centers on three stacked moves: master prompt engineering and GenAI fundamentals, get hands‑on with applied projects, and learn finance‑specific AI workflows.

Start with beginner-to-intermediate prompt courses - QA's prompt engineering offerings cover basics through Copilot‑focused prompts and chain‑prompting techniques - then deepen with an instructor‑led GenAI & Prompt Engineering program that includes 24 modules, hands‑on labs and a capstone to build deployable solutions (see Eduhubspot's curriculum).

Parallel to technical training, take finance‑tailored programs like Nicolas Boucher's AI for Finance courses (ChatGPT for Finance, Copilot for Finance, Advanced AI for Finance) to translate prompts and LLM outputs into FP&A, reporting and control use cases.

Add optional Python/automation skills and a portfolio of real projects (invoice summarizers, NL→SQL converters, Copilot templates) to make the learning demonstrable to employers.

The payoff: a clear, employer‑friendly dossier of capstone work and prompt libraries that turn repetitive checks into confidence‑scored reviews - enough to move a team from manual toil to exception‑driven oversight within months rather than years.

Employers and HR in Puerto Rico should treat AI adoption as an organizational control project: require vendor attestations and SSAE 18/SOC reports, build explainability and audit trails into procurement, and redesign roles so HR hires for exception‑handling and governance as much as for transactional skills; for practical assurance steps see DRIVEN Advisors' assurance services for audits, SSAE 18 and employee benefit plan work (DRIVEN Advisors Assurance & Audit Services), and prioritize model explainability and audit trails that satisfy auditors and the Oversight Board (Complete Guide to Using AI as a Finance Professional in Puerto Rico (2025)).

Concrete actions: add SSAE 18 requirements to vendor contracts, map AI decision points into existing payroll/pension and procurement controls, invest in role-based upskilling for prompt libraries and exception reviews, and coordinate with internal audit and external assurance providers before wide rollout - treating each model like a service provider that touches critical financial controls.

“The fiscal controls and enhanced budget process now contain a level of detail and transparency to clearly show taxpayers how their money is spent, as well as the controls in place to avoid the financial instability and deficits that Puerto Rico previously confronted.” - Adam Chepenik

Building a resilient finance workforce in Puerto Rico means pairing technical training with clear policy and public programs that scale fast: university hubs like UPRM's Artificial Intelligence Imaging Group are already developing machine‑learning methods and efficient AI workflows that can be adapted to finance analytics (UPRM Artificial Intelligence Imaging Group (AIIG)), while the NSF‑backed ExpandAI partnership led by UPRM is explicitly designed to scale research and education programs and

develop the next generation of AI education and workforce talent

for the island (UPRM ExpandAI NSF partnership).

Practical pilots - such as course series and short workshops at the Medical Sciences campus that teach AI/ML for Hispanic datasets - pair well with classroom innovations like the AI for TAs project that deploys 24/7 course‑specific chatbots to close gaps for Hispanic students and free instructor time for higher‑value mentoring (HETS AI for TAs chatbot project).

Policy work at UPR, including a national‑level coalition formed at the 2nd Congreso Internacional de IA en la Educación Superior with five committees (Policy, Education, Health, HR, Cybersecurity), offers a governance model for embedding ethics, transparency and syllabus‑level AI use rules into finance upskilling - so finance teams get both practical tool training and the audit‑ready policies auditors expect.

A coordinated mix of research labs, NSF partnerships, targeted bootcamps and campus‑level AI policy makes the island's finance workforce more adaptable; imagine a junior analyst using a confidence‑scored AI review in minutes instead of wrestling with spreadsheets for days.

Practical 2025 checklist for Puerto Rico's finance community: individuals should sign up for an intensive, hands‑on program (for example, the 4‑day AI & Data Analytics for Finance Professionals 4‑Day Course - Informa Connect with live‑digital and in‑house options) to learn lo‑code AI setups, predictive analytics and model interpretation; pair that training with local conferences and meetups listed on island conference calendars to network and show employer‑ready projects (Puerto Rico AI & Finance Conferences and Meetups 2025 - Island Conference Calendar).

Employers and institutions should sponsor cohort training or customised in‑house runs, require auditability and explainability in procurements, and send staff to regional events like ICMA's Experience Puerto Rico Conference - Aug 17–19, 2025 to align AI use with public‑sector controls.

Make concrete commitments: one capstone portfolio item per employee, a vendor‑attestation checklist for AI tools, and quarterly “red‑team” reviews - so teams can swap a week of spreadsheet wrangling for a confidence‑scored review in minutes and keep Puerto Rico's finance operations audit‑ready.

Puerto Rico's biggest AI risk isn't sci‑fi job replacement but a practical governance gap: tools are spreading fast while in‑house skills, clear policies, and audit-ready controls lag behind.

V2A Consulting's 2024 survey found 84% of local organizations have applied AI, yet 59% cite a lack of internal expertise and 48% a lack of understanding - a recipe for misconfigured models, data‑quality failures, or unchecked bias unless employers act quickly (V2A Consulting Puerto Rico AI adoption survey (2024)).

At the same time Puerto Rico is moving to legislate - January 2025 bills would create an AI Officer, an AI Advisory Council, a business registry and targeted cybersecurity training - signaling new procurement, transparency and reporting obligations for island firms (Puerto Rico Senate artificial intelligence bill analysis (MZLS)).

With no single island privacy statute in place, teams should pair vendor attestations and model provenance logs with role‑based upskilling, incident playbooks, and proactive audits so that an auditor's request for an AI “decision trail” doesn't turn into a scramble - think of governance as the insurance that turns experimentation into trustworthy value.

“A significant 84% of local organizations report having applied AI in at least one business function. More importantly, results suggest that AI is starting to deliver value to Puerto Rican organizations.”

Local hiring signals in 2025 are encouraging: the island's tech-to-AI pipeline is producing hireable talent and growing hubs are creating concrete opportunities for finance-adjacent roles like data analysts and automation engineers.

A milestone came when Wovenware formally became Maxar Puerto Rico in January 2025, folding a long-standing local AI and software team into a global geospatial-intelligence center that advertises openings for developers, data & analytics and UX specialists while offering perks such as two wellness days per month and a Grow U professional development program (Maxar Puerto Rico geospatial intelligence careers and openings).

Local employers also favor homegrown graduates - Maxar leaders and others report hiring island talent first - and government adoption of AI recruitment tools (PERFIL powered by Eightfold.ai) signals more streamlined matching of candidates to roles (News Is My Business report on Puerto Rico's AI job market).

The practical upshot: solid entry and mid‑career openings plus employer investment in training, meaning finance teams that pair AI literacy with control skills can tap a local pool that's growing faster than many expect; imagine a junior analyst moving from spreadsheet drudgery to a data‑labeling role on an AI team within months.

“There's a lot of good talent in Puerto Rico. There's a lot of innovation happening here.”

AI in Puerto Rico is less a job apocalypse than a redistribution of work: experts at Tech Day Puerto Rico highlighted Goldman Sachs' finding that roughly one‑fourth of tasks could be automated and flagged office and administrative roles - along with customer service reps, junior programmers and legal assistants - as especially exposed (Tech Day Puerto Rico report on AI-driven job disruption), while Gallup data show workplace AI use has nearly doubled in two years and finance workers are among the more frequent adopters - signaling both disruption and rapid on‑the‑job learning.

That combination makes a clear local playbook: adopt strong governance, shift juniors from rote entry to exception‑handling and analytics, and invest in targeted, employer‑friendly training so teams convert risk into advantage - practical offerings like the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teach prompt use, applied AI workflows and job‑based projects that help finance professionals protect payment rails, speed reviews, and turn weeks of reconciliations into a few confidence‑scored clicks.

With a growing island talent pipeline and public adoption of AI hiring tools, Puerto Rico's finance workforce can treat AI as an accelerator - if leaders pair skills, controls and clear plans to keep jobs resilient and audit‑ready.

“Jobs in the future will always require a human component.”