Faced with persistent market challenges, finance and accounting teams’ roles are growing to monitor cross-departmental collaboration and create holistic business goal alignment.
“I’ve equated being a CFO to the concept of a navigator on a plane,” Jerry Fadden, chief financial officer at direct-to-consumer (D2C) insurance company Kin, said in an interview.
“You’re always adjusting and covering a wide range of operational concerns, treasury and cash management issues, capital planning, and, of course, financial reporting – both management reporting and external reporting.”
Using the Technology Stack
Driving operational robustness across departments necessitates flexible, contemporary systems that can connect with one another smoothly.
“I’d say that throughout the years in the CFO position, there are more specialised technologies that are employed that are a lot more complex than they could have been years before,” Fadden said.
While the solution provider environment used to be fairly focused, he said that today’s CFOs have an almost limitless set of tools to employ in upgrading and optimising their operations.
“In terms of capability and finance, we’re well positioned for the next many years,” he added. “We normally utilise that cash to invest downstream into our reciprocal insurance exchanges, which are the functioning edge firms that administer the policies and so on. We prefer to channel that cash downstream to finance expansion.”
Nonetheless, given the overall gloom in the global landscape, Fadden recognised a continuing move away from pure corporate expansion and toward “a more balanced focus on growth and profitability.”
