Financial Leadership and CFOs’ Career Development in the Age of Change

Job Functions

2018-11-21 15:57

Recently, CFO Summit — The Thought and Action of Chief Financial Officers in the Environment of Change was held jointly by ACCA and KPMG in Shenzhen. It received executives, CFOs, financial directors and experts from well-known corporate like HSBC, MINISO, Morgan Stanley, etc. They focused on the transformation and development of CFOs in the trend of change, and discussed about issues of the present and possibilities of the future.

 



Ms. Amy Chen, the Board Secretary and CFO of Career International, was invited to the summit and shared the keynote speech of Financial Leadership and Career Development of CFOs in the Age of Change. Based on our CFO Survey 2018, Amy shared her insights into the matters of widespread concerns from the success driving factors, improvement, crossover and transformation of the CFOs, which inspired the guests to have more thinking. And we will share Amy’s takes on the issue as below:

In early 2018, we conducted a survey of CFOs, CEOs and financial directors of 3,000 clients of us, and released the CFO Survey at the end of March. What I’m going to talk about will be based on its major findings and also my personal experience.
 
How to Succeed As a CFO or a Finance Team
 
Three major expectations from CEOs on CFOs:
Integrate enterprise information
Provide the information needed for enterprise strategies
Reduce risks for enterprise
 
Three key abilities for CFOs or their teams to be improved:
Risk control
Operation model innovation
Strategic revenue planning
 
Talent Challenges and Solutions


Reasons for severe shortages of critical talents:

A lack of career development system and path;
Financial personnel: not many enough for start-ups in rapid expansion, while not qualified enough for corporations;
Less competitive salaries
 
Solutions:
Internal training and upskilling (80%)
Integration of information(51%)
Finance SSC (47%)
Employees development(41%)
More new hires(26%)
Outsourcing (17%)
 
Cross-Border Mobility Becomes a New Tendency for CFOs

The most popular industries with CFOs:
The Internet, Information Technology, Big Consumption and Real Estate
 
The preferred candidates with working experiences of:
Accounting firms like the Big Four
Corporations
Investment banks