From CFO to CEO: Making the big leap

TRADITIONALLY seen as bean counters, chief finance officers ( CFOs) are now making the leap to assume bigger and more strategic roles in their organizations.

“In times like this when the macroeconomic environment has become more volatile, more global, and more interconnected, depth in financial understanding is a clear asset. This is why the CFO’s role has become more pronounced in many organizations,” said Consuelo Garcia, country manager and managing director of ING Bank, N. V. Manila branch.

For more than a decade now, Dutch financial giant ING and the country’s premier organization of financial leaders, the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines ( Finex), have been mounting the ING Finex CFO of the Year Award to honor the country’s outstanding CFO.

In a CFO study conducted by the Ateneo Graduate School of Business ( AGSB) and Finex Research & Development Foundation in 2014, lead author Dr. Eliseo Aurellado said it is in fact the CFO’s ability to step into the shoes of the CEO that has become one of the main criteria in the ING Finex CFO of the Year annual search.

“What our findings show is that the CFO nowadays is actually the CEO in disguise, waiting in the wings,” said Dr. Aurellado, for- mer head of the Finance Faculty of AGSB. “Now we really see the CFO and CEO as complementary roles. While the CEO may be the visionary, the CFO must be a willing partner in strategy formulation objective- setting given the wealth of financial information at his disposal.”

In addition to being bold and decisive, the CFO must also learn to be agile, especially as he transitions to become the “captain” of the organization who will steer the corporate ship away from a potential crisis and towards safer ground. This is why this year’s annual Search is themed “The Agile CFO: Enabling Change,” as this befits the evolving role of the CFO.