← Risk register SOC 13-2099 · reviewed 2026-08-11

Financial Specialists, All Other

132,130 US workers · median $81,100/yr · Business

EXPOSED

This catch-all bucket — treasury analysts, financial risk specialists, pricing and compliance analysts, benefits and grants finance staff — is dominated by spreadsheet modeling, reconciliation, variance reporting, and memo-writing, all of which current AI drafts at usable quality with a human reviewing. The modal worker holds no license that legally requires a signature, so the surviving work is the part where someone assembles ambiguous evidence, makes a capital, pricing, or risk call, and answers for it to a committee or regulator. Employment concentrates upward: fewer analysts producing packets, more specialists owning positions and defending assumptions.

10-year outlook: By 2035 the reporting and modeling core of these roles is largely machine-produced with human review, and headcount consolidates around specialists who set assumptions, negotiate with counterparties, and answer to regulators.

US employment, 2021–2025+7.2%
123,200132,130 workers

Headcount grew steadily across the period.

The job count is not the verdict

This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.

So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing.

BLS projection, 2024–2034

+3.1% 137,100 → 141,400 on the projections basis

Exposed, but growing

AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +3.1% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.

Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.

~10,300 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.

One email if this score changes. Watch as many occupations as you like from the same address — no account, and nothing is sent on a schedule, only when a verdict actually moves.

Also known as — 24 job titles this covers

Titles reported by people doing this work, from the US Department of Labor's O*NET survey. If your job title is here, this page is about your work even though the name doesn't match.

PurserAnalystAdjusterBondsmanBail AgentStructurerShip PurserData AnalystEscrow AgentInvestigatorRate AnalystBail BondsmanEscrow CloserFraud AnalystRate EngineerEquity AnalystFraud ExaminerFutures TraderBail Bond AgentFinance AnalystFraud SpecialistResearch AnalystEquity StructurerFinancial Analyst

This is a catch-all code, not a single job

The BLS uses Financial Specialists, All Other for work that doesn't fit any named occupation, so it covers roles that have little in common with each other. Two consequences worth knowing before you read anything below:

If a more specific occupation on the register describes what you actually do, that page is the one to trust.

Score — 36/100 resistance

Holding it up: judgment & accountability (11/20). Weakest point: embodiment (3/20).

Five dimensions, 0–20 each, summed. Higher means more protected. The arithmetic is shown so you can check it: 8 + 3 + 5 + 9 + 11 = 36. · Scored 2026-08-11, and re-examined when evidence accumulates rather than on a schedule.

Task resistance 8/20

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Pulling bank feeds into a cash position, tying subledger to GL, building a rate-sensitivity table, and drafting the variance narrative are all things a model does at first-draft quality today — what holds the score at 8 rather than 4 is the recurring work of chasing down why a counterparty confirmation doesn't match, arguing an assumption with a business unit head, and deciding what the packet should say when the data is late or wrong.

Embodiment 3/20

Fully desk- and screen-based The job is a laptop, a market data terminal, and a recurring committee meeting; the only physical element is walking a signature page or sitting in the room when the treasurer approves a hedge, which is why this is 3 and not 0.

Liability shield 5/20

Certification preferred, not legally required Nothing in this bucket requires a state license to perform — the CFA, CTP, or FRM your employer put on the job posting is a hiring filter, not a statutory one, and when a hedge accounting treatment or a grant cost allocation gets challenged it is the CFO, controller, or an external auditor whose name is on the attestation, not yours.

Trust premium 9/20

Some relationship component Your standing comes from being the person the treasurer, the ALCO, or the program officer calls before they commit — real, but it is credibility about a specific book or grant portfolio rather than a portable client relationship, and the reconciliation and reporting half of the job is consumed by people who never learn who produced it.

Judgment & accountability 11/20

Meaningful discretion Setting a transfer price, sizing a liquidity buffer, calling an allowance assumption, or deciding a cost is unallowable under 2 CFR 200 are genuinely contestable calls you defend in a meeting — but at 11 rather than 16 because a policy, limit framework, or delegated authority almost always caps your discretion and someone above you signs the final position.

Confidence: medium · reviewed 2026-08-11 · how scoring works

What this job involves — and which parts are yours

The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.

AI already does these at usable quality

These still need a person

Active moats on the surviving side: judgment, trust

How to future-proof this job

Where to go deeper on what this job runs on: Khan Academy — mathematics, arithmetic through calculus free · Coursera — critical thinking and logic, audit free free to audit · Coursera — active listening and communication skills free to audit · Purdue OWL — the standard reference for professional writing free · Khan Academy — reading and vocabulary, all levels, free free · Khan Academy — reading and vocabulary, all levels, free free

All 35 skills ranked by how many jobs they open →

What would move this back up — beyond any one person

The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 49/100, still EXPOSED.

4 specific changes that would raise this score
  • already happening liability shield +5

    Bank/insurer model-risk regimes extending named-individual accountability to AI-generated analytics: e.g. an SR 11-7 / OCC model risk management update or a state DFS circular (NY DFS already issued 2024 guidance on AI in insurance underwriting) requiring a named model owner and independent validator to personally attest to each AI-assisted pricing or capital model before use. Also Sarbanes-Oxley 302/404 sub-certification cascades: if audit committees require a named specialist to sub-certify AI-produced reconciliations and reserve estimates, the signature becomes a job function.

  • already happening judgment accountability +4

    Task-mix shift plus formal ownership: as drafting and reconciliation are automated, the residual role is defending assumptions to ALCO, pricing committees, rating agencies, or a regulator's exam team. This rises further if institutions formalize 'AI output challenger' roles — a documented human dissent record required in model validation files, as EU AI Act Art. 14 human-oversight obligations demand for high-risk credit and insurance systems.

  • plausible task resistance +3

    Genuine two-tier structure: routine tier (variance packets, reconciliations, grant drawdown schedules) automates; residual tier (novel instrument valuation with no comparables, distressed counterparty judgment, reserve setting under litigation uncertainty, defending a transfer-pricing position under audit) resists because inputs are non-public, contested, and adversarial. Score rises mechanically as the routine tier disappears from the day, not because AI got worse.

  • unlikely trust premium +1

    Narrow route only: grant-funded and public-sector finance where funders (federal agencies under 2 CFR 200, foundations) require a named human preparer for cost allocation and single-audit certifications. Outside that, buyers of internal analytics are employers, not clients, and there is no realistic route to paying extra for a human.

The limit. Embodiment has no route; this is screen work. The structural problem is that this SOC bucket is defined by residual, not by a profession — there is no board, no exam, no title protection to hang a liability shield on, so any gain has to come from firm-level or supervisory attestation rules that name individuals. Those rules concentrate accountability in a smaller number of senior specialists rather than protecting headcount, so the occupation's score can rise while employment falls.

These are conditions, not forecasts — what would have to happen, not what will. Specific rules, cases and bills are named so you can go and check whether they exist and where they stand; verify before relying on any of them. Nothing here is legal or financial advice.

Where this work is, and what it pays there

BLS metro figures for 251 areas. The verdict above does not change by city — the rubric judges what the work involves, not where it happens — but pay and headcount do, and the national median hides a very wide range.

Most of these jobs

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ 11,950 $109,580 +35%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 5,820 $120,580 +49%
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN 4,630 $81,740 +1%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 4,440 $72,330 -11%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 4,100 $80,840 +0%
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 3,050 $84,680 +4%
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 2,880 $78,410 -3%
Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO 2,820 $88,090 +9%

Best paid

Lexington Park, MD 720 $132,620 +64%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 5,820 $120,580 +49%
Chambersburg, PA 40 $111,530 +38%

Percentages are against this occupation's national median of $81,100. Counts are jobs in that metro, not vacancies. Metros where the BLS suppressed the cell are absent rather than shown as zero.

Who is actually doing this — nobody, on the record

We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.

That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 36. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.

Read that as a gap in the reporting we can see, not proof of absence — the dispatch runs on English-language feeds and misses plenty. If you know of a case, tell us, or add a field report from inside the job.

Quick take — do you do this job?

Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.

Self-reported and unverified — a sentiment signal, not a survey. One response per person per occupation; you can change your answer.

Field reports — what people say has changed

No field reports yet. A written account takes a paragraph rather than a tap, goes to an editor before it appears, and is the one thing on this page the rubric cannot produce on its own.

File a field report

Concrete beats general: a tool that arrived, a task that moved, a headcount decision you watched happen. Don't include anything that identifies you or your employer if that would put you at risk.

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