Head of Employee Relations & HR Compliance

BlackLine honors global enterprise leaders transforming Financial Operations. BlackLine's 2026 Modern Accounting Awards recognize Booking Holdings, Bristol Myers Squibb, James Hardie, LAZ Parking, Payoneer, and US Foods. LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL) announced the winners of its 2026 Modern Accounting Awards, celebrating six enterprise leaders that are redefining how modern finance and accounting teams work. This year's honorees achieved large-scale operational breakthroughs by combining unified data architectures with intelligent automation and agentic workflows. These organizations have eliminated tens of thousands of manual close hours, unified fragmented systems, and established continuous, audit-ready financial operations. "Accounting and finance teams are at an inflection point. Organizations can no longer meet 21st -century expectations with 20th -century workflows," said Owen Ryan, CEO and Chairman of BlackLine. "This year's award winners aren't just accelerating month-end - they are redefining enterprise agility by demonstrating what continuous, modern accounting delivers in practice." 2026 Modern Accounting Award Honorees Booking Holdings, Inc. Booking Holdings and its global portfolio of leading travel and hospitality brands - including Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, KAYAK, and OpenTable - continue to grow, and the company is evolving its finance operations to keep pace with the scale of its increasing complexity. With finance operations spanning a multi-ERP environment, Booking Holdings partnered with BlackLine to drive standardization and business-led automation to create greater efficiency and operational excellence across its finance organization. Bristol Myers Squibb Bristol Myers Squibb is transforming financial close for one of the world's most complex biopharmaceutical enterprises. Operating within a highly regulated, large-scale global footprint, BMS replaced siloed, spreadsheet-heavy record-to-report workflows with a unified digital command center, automating the majority of its balance sheet reconciliations and eliminating thousands of manual close tasks. As a strategic partner deeply engaged in BlackLine and SAP's joint AI roadmap, BMS is helping lead the industry toward an intelligent, touchless close, actively piloting agentic workflows and expanding its use of BlackLine's Studio360 platform. James Hardie Following a major corporate acquisition that left the company navigating eight disparate ERP systems and siloed accounting processes, the industry leader in exterior home and outdoor living solutions standardized nearly 500 global finance users on BlackLine under its unified "One Hardie" vision. A customer for over a decade, James Hardie modernized its end-to-end financial operations by adopting Studio360, rolling out Invoice-to-Cash, and piloting Verity(TM) AI to establish automated, audit-ready governance across the combined enterprise. LAZ Parking, LLC Managing decentralized operations across thousands of nationwide locations and 1,200 separate bank accounts, the country's largest parking operator modernized its accounting foundation with the BlackLine platform. Today, LAZ Parking automates tens of millions of transactions annually with an astounding daily auto-match rate. Demonstrating its commitment to practical innovation, LAZ Parking is also an early adopter of Verity Prepare, leveraging AI to drive speed, precision, and financial control. Powering cross-border payments for millions of digital businesses worldwide, Payoneer modernized its high-velocity financial operations by replacing a legacy reconciliation solution with BlackLine's unified platform. By linking transaction matching directly to automated journal entries, Payoneer created a closed-loop ecosystem and is now exploring how BlackLine's agentic AI capabilities could support further efficiencies. Partnering with approximately 250,000 restaurants and operators nationwide, US Foods modernized close management and governance during a company-wide finance operating model transformation. The foodservice distributor drove a 160% surge in active user adoption and a 5x expansion in automated journal processing. Centralized task workflows, embedded SOX controls, and real-time leadership dashboards enhanced project deadline alignment while drastically improving first-time accounting accuracy and close times. Celebration at BeyondTheBlack(TM) 2026 The 2026 Modern Accounting Award recipients will be celebrated at BlackLine's flagship annual conference, BeyondTheBlack(TM), taking place November 16-18, 2026, in Orlando, Florida. Transformation leaders from each organization will present real-world case studies detailing their technical blueprints and operational results. About BlackLine BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) provides the trust infrastructure where finance drives the agentic era with intelligence, integrity, and trust. The BlackLine Agentic Financial Operations Platform(TM), powered by Verity(TM) AI, is where the Office of the CFO puts AI to work, governs it at every step, and guarantees its integrity across the work of finance. By unifying data and embedding AI agents that finance teams direct, BlackLine moves finance and accounting beyond reporting on the business to orchestrating it in real time. More than 4,300 customers across multiple industries partner with BlackLine to lead their organizations into the future. For more information, visit BlackLine.com

AI council launches finance certification in Singapore. Tue, 13th Oct 2026 (Today) The AI Assurance Council has opened examinations in Singapore for its Certified AI in Finance & Accounting credential. The launch reflects survey data on rising AI use in the profession and limited formal training. The certification is designed to test whether finance and accounting professionals know when to rely on AI output, when to verify it, and when to escalate concerns. Candidates will sit a remotely proctored two-hour exam based on applied scenarios rather than knowledge of individual tools. Two levels are available. Fundamentals is aimed at finance and accounting professionals who use AI in analysis, close, and reporting. Professional is aimed at senior finance leaders responsible for decisions about how AI is used in their functions. Each credential is valid for two years and appears on a public register that employers can check. Fees are USD $695 for Fundamentals and USD $895 for Professional, and a video course is included for candidates. Training gap The launch follows a series of surveys suggesting AI adoption in finance is outpacing workforce preparation. Research by Chartered Accountants Worldwide and Ipsos, published by the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, found that 89% of Singapore accounting professionals expect AI to significantly change how they do their jobs within five years. The same survey found that 34% said the value accountants provide could be replaced by automated systems. Only 45% of respondents said they had taken part in AI training through their employer, while 51% cited a lack of skills and training as the biggest barrier to AI adoption in the profession. Another recent marker came from Gartner, which said low AI literacy is now "the most significant barrier" finance leaders must address. The concern comes as AI is increasingly used in work that can feed into forecasts, reconciliations, and disclosures reviewed by auditors, audit committees, and regulators. Workiva's 2026 survey of 2,272 finance, risk, and sustainability professionals pointed to a similar tension. It found that 84% of executives said they were at least somewhat confident in AI output without human review, yet 26% said internal audits had caught AI errors that reached boards or external audiences. Regulatory backdrop The certification launch also comes against Singapore's regulatory backdrop. Proposed guidelines from the Monetary Authority of Singapore on AI risk management would require financial institutions to ensure that their internal expertise matches the AI systems they use. That focus on oversight has become more prominent as finance teams use AI in work that may ultimately support external reporting or internal control processes. The issue is less about whether AI is present in finance functions than about who is accountable when its output is wrong. The AI Assurance Council was founded by Danny Heng and Durga Rajesh R, the organisation's Director of Assurance and Technology. According to the organisation, Heng previously worked in finance software sales across Asia Pacific at BlackLine, Thomson Reuters, and Epiq. In the announcement, Heng linked the new certification to changes he had seen in finance teams as automation spread. "I've seen both sides of automation in finance. Processes got faster and more accurate, and some of the people who used to do that work were no longer needed," said Danny Heng, Executive Director, AI Assurance Council. "AI is doing the same thing again, faster and to far more roles. The professionals who stay valuable will be the ones who can look at what AI produces and tell when it's wrong. Right now they have no way to prove that. This certification gives them one." According to the council, Rajesh came to the issue from an engineering background after building AI agents, retrieval systems, and blockchain infrastructure for regulated financial firms operating under Singapore's technology risk rules. It said that experience shaped its focus on evidence, verification, and documented judgment rather than tool familiarity alone. The council describes itself as an independent certification body focused on the use of AI in professional work, starting with finance and accounting. It aims to address the absence of a shared standard for deciding when AI-generated work can be relied on, when it should be checked more closely, and when it should be escalated. Alongside the paid exams, the organisation has also opened a free AI Readiness Check for public use. The short assessment is intended to give finance professionals an initial view of their preparedness to work with AI in their roles.