The financial questions I make easier to examine

Our monthly management accounts arrived twelve working days after period end. Executives wanted an earlier view, but finance colleagues worried that a shorter timetable would compress review rather than improve the work. There were 4,800 reconciliation items older than the internal review window, spread across systems and branch records. A simple deadline instruction would have left that underlying condition intact.

I approved a CNY6.8 million programme combining reconciliation workflow, source-data ownership and temporary specialist support. We classified the aged items by value and cause, rather than treating every line as equally important. Branch teams received specific queries before month end where possible. The controller retained authority to raise a significant unresolved matter instead of quietly carrying it into a general suspense explanation.

The trade-off was visible. We deferred a planned reduction in support capacity, and commercial managers had to release experienced staff for data correction. Some argued that the finance department should absorb the work alone. I accepted finance accountability for the close but rejected the idea that finance could correct source records without their owners. We agreed named responsibilities and reported overdue actions to the executive review.

After twelve months, the management close took seven working days and the aged-item count had fallen to 430. Those remaining items stayed in a register with values, owners and next actions. The result did not establish that every account was error-free, and the implementation cost was not presented as a saving. We also reviewed subsequent adjustments to check whether work had simply shifted beyond the earlier deadline.

I would begin the next programme with a better record of the time spent resolving recurring causes. We measured the stock of exceptions well before we measured the effort behind them. That omission made the resource discussion harder than it needed to be, particularly for branches carrying a disproportionate share of older records.

Our branch performance reports used an internal funding method that gave limited recognition to differences in the duration and behaviour of funding. Lending teams could appear attractive without seeing the full internal cost of the commitment they created. Deposit teams questioned why balances with different renewal patterns received similar treatment. The disagreement affected incentives as well as accounting presentation.

I sponsored a joint review with treasury and commercial management. Treasury developed the funding assumptions; finance reconciled the resulting management contribution to the bank's total; branch leaders examined the customer behaviours the method might encourage. We ran the revised account alongside the existing one for two quarters before changing the relevant performance measures.

The revised method reassigned CNY88 million of annual management contribution between branches and central treasury. Eight of thirty-six branches changed performance quartile. That was not CNY88 million of new income. The bank-wide account did not improve simply because the internal allocation changed, and we made that explicit in the executive paper.

Several branch heads opposed the timing because they had made commitments under the old approach. I agreed to a transition period for the affected incentive calculations, while keeping both sets of figures visible. The cost was slower adoption and a more complicated reporting pack for two quarters. The benefit was that colleagues could distinguish a commercial change from a measurement change before their performance was judged through it.

In a subsequent six-branch pilot, the reviewed category of more stable customer balances rose from CNY5.4 billion to CNY6.1 billion over nine months. Pricing, customer activity and the economic environment also changed. I did not attribute the movement solely to the new method. The lasting result was a better conversation about funding commitments. In retrospect, I would have involved branch teams earlier in testing the explanations, because a technically correct model still needs language that a customer-facing manager can use.

A portfolio review produced evidence that changed our assessment of expected credit losses. Risk and lending colleagues had examined the customer positions, while finance evaluated the accounting effect and its presentation. The proposed revision increased the allowance by CNY156 million. Recognising that movement would reduce pre-tax profit by the same amount in the affected period, before any tax effect.

Commercial management asked whether the decision could wait for another round of customer discussions. Their concern was understandable: some of the underlying outcomes remained uncertain, and the reported movement would materially affect the period's result. I asked the team to distinguish uncertainty about future recovery from uncertainty about the evidence already available. The earnings calendar was not an additional source of evidence.

We prepared a movement analysis separating portfolio changes, revised assumptions and other adjustments. The paper retained the principal disagreements, the basis for the estimate and the conditions that would prompt another review. I presented the finance judgement to the audit committee with the relevant risk contribution available for challenge. Committee consideration did not transfer management's preparation responsibilities to the directors.

The allowance increased by CNY156 million as proposed. I described the movement as an accounting estimate with an immediate earnings consequence. It was not a CNY156 million cash payment, nor did it mean that the same amount had been written off or that customer obligations had disappeared. Those distinctions were repeated in the internal explanation because an imprecise summary would have obscured the decision we had actually made.

The difficult consequence was a lower reported result and additional work for colleagues explaining it. The improvement was a clearer record of how new evidence reached the accounts. I would commission the explanation earlier next time, alongside the analysis, because writing it exposed questions that a completed spreadsheet had not resolved. I would also preserve more of the rejected assumptions so a later reviewer could understand why the final judgement differed from an earlier view.

A balance-sheet planning discussion proposed reducing a readily available liquidity buffer to improve income. The assets released could have supported a higher-yielding use, but treasury's scenario work showed a narrower margin for ordinary funding variation. The decision was not mine alone. Treasury owned the liquidity analysis, risk challenged the scenarios and the authorised executive forum considered the proposal.

My finance team made the income trade-off explicit. Retaining an additional CNY1.2 billion in the proposed buffer carried an estimated CNY18 million annual income opportunity cost under the assumed yield difference. That figure was a planning comparison, not a fee paid to an external party. It also depended on the alternatives remaining available at the assumed rates.

I supported retaining the buffer, with a scheduled review of its size and the assumptions behind it. Commercial colleagues argued that the bank was giving up income while their own plans remained demanding. I asked that the resulting budget reflect the decision rather than require the same income to be recovered through an unexplained stretch elsewhere. The executive forum accepted both the buffer recommendation and the corresponding planning consequence.

During the reviewed year, the bank did not face the most severe scenario used in the discussion. I resisted presenting that fact as evidence that the decision had been unnecessary or as proof that the buffer had prevented a crisis. We had purchased flexibility under uncertainty. Its usefulness could be reviewed through actual funding patterns, availability and cost without inventing an avoided loss.

The enterprise change was a closer connection between a balance-sheet choice and the income plan attached to it. I would improve the next review by showing a wider range of opportunity costs, because a single CNY18 million estimate acquired more authority in discussion than its assumptions deserved. The lesson concerns how finance explains a choice, not a universal prescription for how much liquidity another bank should hold.

Our first planning case for net-interest income used a combination of average balances and year-end assumptions. It was convenient to consolidate, but it did not fully represent when existing loans would reprice or when deposits would renew. Treasury colleagues could see the timing mismatch in their schedules, while commercial teams were discussing an annual figure that concealed it.

I asked finance to rebuild the relevant forecast by monthly cohorts, using the available contractual dates and explicit assumptions where customer behaviour remained uncertain. The work did not require us to pretend that every renewal was known. It required a clear distinction between an observed date, a commercial expectation and a planning convention.

The revised case removed CNY74 million of unsupported net-interest income from the initial plan. The chief executive challenged whether finance had become too cautious, and business leaders wanted to preserve the earlier ambition. I kept the commercial aspiration separate from the forecast mechanics. If a team proposed an action that could replace part of the income, it needed its own assumptions, owner and implementation timetable.

We accepted the lower base case and retained alternatives for different renewal and repricing patterns. The adjustment was not a realised loss, and removing it from a spreadsheet did not save cash. It made the plan more faithful to the balance-sheet sequence we could support at the time. The annual net-interest income variance to the revised plan was CNY29 million, compared with CNY118 million against the preceding year's plan. Market conditions and the business mix differed, so the comparison does not isolate the method's effect.

The useful change was that a forecast disagreement could be traced to a date or assumption before it became an argument about commitment. I would have introduced the monthly view earlier in the planning cycle. Producing it late left too little time for commercial teams to develop credible responses and encouraged people to defend a number before they understood how it had been assembled.