Interim Chief Financial Officer — Scale (Asset Management)

One version of the numbers

An investment business can tolerate many opinions about markets. It cannot tolerate several versions of its own cost base. When each team keeps its own view of what a product earns, what a platform costs and what a budget returns, every capital decision becomes a debate about whose numbers to use, and the debate is usually won by the most persistent rather than the most accurate. The Interim Chief Financial Officer is appointed to settle the numbers so that the debate can move on to the decision.

That calls for executive authority, and the appointment carries it. You will write the rules for capital and operating decisions, decide what each business team may approve on its own, and select the measures that steer capital, people and control. Every existing commitment will receive your ruling to survive, wait or be retired. Plans that move cost or risk onto a team without its consent will stop with you, and investment that has not reckoned with adoption, dependencies or the downside will be declined. You will approve the finance leadership structure and the route problems take, and settle any dispute between directors and business heads before funds are committed.

Definitions first, systems second

A single financial view is built from definitions before it is built from systems. Agreeing what counts as revenue for a product, how shared platform cost is attributed and which data source is authoritative will take longer than any reporting tool, and it is where most of the resistance lives. The view will hold only if the people who used to own competing versions accept the new one as fair.

Across the 12 months, the opening ninety days should give the board agreed definitions, data sources and owners for that view. Around month nine, capital and operating proposals should be assessed on the single view, with the competing local versions retired rather than left running in parallel. By month 12, the one view should be used for every capital and operating decision, and finance successors should be in place who can keep it that way.

Someone the board can rely on, and how you will meet them

You have settled competing versions of the numbers before, and you know the resistance lives in definitions rather than systems. In organisations with seven countries, at least 800 people and $570 million or more in revenue, your baselines held when a board and the people who run the investment, distribution and fiduciary platform day to day pushed back on them. You grow successors as the model changes, so that the single view outlasts your involvement. Selection will weigh your record in scale-up, joint venture and professionalisation; capital allocation is sought at level 4, with risk judgement, FP&A forecasting, and controls and reporting at level 3. If you could not close a commitment without the blessing of each national head, or want influence without twelve months of accountability, the seat will not fit.

First comes a confidential exchange over video with the Board of Directors in week one. The Risk Committee Chair then spends week three with you on the risks a single view carries; in week five a panel of executives, drawn one from each function, meets you face to face; and the seventh week ends with the whole board. Expect to hear within four working days of each stage.