ACCA: The future of the CFO 

New research conducted by ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and IMA (the Institute of Management Accountants) identifies five key influences shaping the future role of finance leadership and the destiny of the CFO function.

Volatility, risk, data, technology and talent were all singled out in the study as key influences impacting the finance function. These influences show how the CFO role, and the demands that come with that, are shifting as activities that drive business value change. It is vital that these are understood and acted upon if finance chiefs are to succeed in the job in the future.

Leading as top influences are economic volatility and risk, which present ongoing challenges to the capacity of the finance in an organisation.  Jamie Lyon, Head of Corporate Sector at ACCA, explains: ‘The external environment is going to be hugely challenging for CFOs. Certainly we can expect no let up on economic volatility, and there’s simply much more risk to deal with, but when you overlay this with challenges around transformation of business models and so on, it’s a difficult future terrain for most finance chiefs to support their businesses in striving for sustainable growth.’

The study suggests the CFO organisation continues to be under pressure by data. Finance now has to support the wider company strategy, making sure its activities align with this through using the right data. ‘Enterprises who use the data at their disposal drives competitive advantage,’ says Jamie Lyon, ‘but challenges remain in finding data that will enable finance to track, report and help the organisation take the right commercial decisions.’

The report next identified technology as a core asset for finance leaders, who need to continue prioritising investment here to drive enterprise growth. ‘Digital technologies will become a core finance leadership enabler in businesses. CFOs have a responsibility to ensure social, mobile, cloud and analytics become a strategic tool in driving change,’ said Raef Lawson, Ph.D., CMA, CPA, IMA’s vice president of research and policy.

The study concludes that the quality of talent available to the future CFO organisation will be vital to its success, yet as the role evolves and companies look to outsource finance activities , the traditional finance career path is at risk of becoming distorted. As Lyon says: ‘One of the biggest questions facing the future CFO function is this: where will your future finance leadership talent come from? It’s a critical question, and businesses need to think very carefully about how they will develop the next generation of finance leaders.’

Concluding on the report findings, Lyon adds: ‘The assets needed to be a effective CFO have changed. In a customer centric economy intangibles such as data, brand, talent and innovation are central to helping businesses succeed. As the study shows, how CFOs embrace and adapt to these, is going to be really important in the future.’

The report asked 1,631 ACCA and IMA members from around the world their views on the skills, experience and priorities for current and future CFOs. Supplementing the research were a number of in-depth one-on-one interviews conducted with senior finance professionals from a range of enterprises.