Chief Financial Officer / India
A clearer account changed the financial proposition
- Finance colleagues
- 30
- Four leads within the CFO function
- Annual finance-function expense
- ₹5.2 crore
- Separate from insurer premium and claims obligations
- Accounting and finance experience
- 27 years
- Service accounts, expense management, control and CFO roles
Decisions & consequences
012020: correcting the expense that the consolidation counted twice
As financial controller, I approved a management paper showing ₹18 crore of defined support expense. It added a ₹9 crore central cost pool to ₹9 crore of allocations from that same pool into twenty-four operating centres. Both schedules were individually complete, which made the combined total look reassuring. Their relationship had not been preserved. The enterprise had incurred the defined ₹9 crore once; allocation described its distribution, not another payment or another economic expense.
I withdrew the presentation and told the CFO that the error sat within my review responsibility. An eight-week reconciliation across the twenty-four centres received ₹54 lakh of separately approved review support. We traced the source pool, the allocation entries and the elimination required in the combined management view. Operating managers helped explain the use of the resource, while finance retained responsibility for the corrected consolidation. The review did not authorise changes to policy liabilities, product pricing or statutory reporting treatment outside its defined scope.
The corrected paper showed ₹9 crore for that expense population and explained the difference from the earlier ₹18 crore. I refused to describe the ₹9 crore reduction in the displayed total as a cash saving. No supplier charge, payroll obligation or bank payment had vanished because the presentation was repaired. Management could still examine whether the actual expense was appropriate, but that was a separate operating question requiring its own evidence.
The result was a corrected decision account and an explicit explanation of the error, not an invented efficiency gain. I asked subsequent management papers to show the relationship between central and allocated views wherever they were combined. The lesson was uncomfortable because arithmetic accuracy within each schedule had helped me overlook the meaning of their sum. Senior review needed to test what the combined number represented, not simply whether its components matched their individual records.
2023: putting lower claims payments beside the obligation movement
A quarterly management discussion highlighted selected claims payments of ₹21 crore against ₹25 crore in the comparison period. The smaller payment figure was being read as an improvement in claims cost. I asked for a consistent movement account before supporting that conclusion. Miriam Delqvashi and the claims team retained responsibility for the relevant estimates and claim decisions; finance’s task was to connect those inputs without treating cash timing as a complete performance measure.
For a deliberately bounded internal illustration, the selected opening outstanding amount was ₹48 crore and the closing amount ₹57 crore. With ₹21 crore paid and no other movements assumed within that illustration, ₹30 crore of net additions reconciled the account: forty-eight plus thirty less twenty-one equalled fifty-seven. The simplified bridge was not presented as the insurer’s full claims expense, a capital calculation or a substitute for the applicable reporting basis. It showed why the payment figure alone could not answer the question management had attached to it.
The CEO approved ₹84 lakh over twelve weeks to reconcile six selected cohorts and document the movements and scope. We separated the illustration from the fuller professional account, including any estimate changes and other adjustments that needed their own treatment. The board discussion could then distinguish lower cash outflow in a period from a conclusion about the underlying claims experience. Neither a favourable nor an adverse enterprise result was asserted from the small bridge alone.
My decision was to withhold the proposed improvement language until the account supported it. That required more explanation than a simple payment comparison and did not generate a claimed recovery or saving. It also kept professional responsibility visible: the CFO should understand and challenge the reconciliation without becoming the actuary or deciding individual policyholder entitlements. The case changed the evidence required for the management conclusion, rather than merely adding a more complicated chart to the same headline.
2025: separating productive redeployment from a payroll-saving claim
An administration proposal described twenty-four full-time-equivalent roles of released capacity at ₹12 lakh annual employment cost each. Multiplication produced ₹2.88 crore, which appeared in the business case as a yearly cash saving. The proposed operating plan did not support that description. Eighteen colleagues would move into continuing service work and remain employed. Six planned vacancies would no longer be filled. Released capacity, redeployment and avoided recruitment were being treated as the same financial event.
I asked the operating sponsor to retain the service benefits while revising the cash account. Under the stated full-year assumption, six avoided hires supported ₹72 lakh of avoided planned employment expense, not ₹2.88 crore of removed payroll. The programme also carried ₹48 lakh annual running expense and ₹3.6 crore implementation cost. On those limited assumptions, the annual difference between avoided hiring and added running expense was ₹24 lakh before other effects. That arithmetic alone did not establish an attractive investment return, and I did not present it as a complete valuation.
The CEO and board reviewed the programme on its fuller service and resource case. They approved the implementation commitment with separate review of operating outcomes and the financial assumptions. No colleague’s redeployment was described as a redundancy, and no realised saving was claimed merely because capacity had been identified. Finance and operations agreed to examine the timing of the avoided vacancies and the actual continuing costs in subsequent reviews.
The outcome was a narrower financial proposition and a more honest basis for the investment decision. The programme could be worthwhile without pretending that every hour released would become cash. I learned that a CFO’s challenge should preserve legitimate service value while refusing a misleading financial shortcut. The approval account needed to explain what management intended to do with the people, not only what a model could multiply by their average employment cost.