ICAEW: Finance Leaders Must Help Steer Business Through COVID-19 Recovery
Chief Financial Officers must play a crucial role in steering businesses through COVID-19 recovery, by bringing risk management expertise and helping to build organisational resilience and agility, according to ICAEW (the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales).
This was the consensus from a panel of experts during a recent ICAEW (the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) webinar on the role of the CFO in business recovery.
The panel of experts, made up of business leaders, provided insight and shared first-hand experiences and views on the future, including potential economic scenarios which may arise. Discussions also centred on the evolving role of the CFO and how to use financial reporting to optimise cash projections and enable better liquidity management. Panellists included:
- Paolo Lomonaco, CFO of the Chalhoub Group
- Christiana Panayidou, Partner, CESA IFRS Leader, Assurance, EY
- Christian Thomas, Group CFO, Hellenic Petroleum SA
- Sofocles Tymvios, Swissport Cyprus CFO & Swissport International Med subregion Head of Finance, ICPAC CFO Committee
- Rick Payne, Technical Manager, ICAEW Business and Management Faculty
The panellists agreed CFOs must remain in the “driver’s seat” as organisations navigate recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlighted how CFOs continue to work across the business and contribute to effective decison making.
The panellists also agreed that CFOs will have to both manage the continuing ramifications of the pandemic and look to the future. New strategies and business models will have to be explored and implemented. These will need to take into account continuing advances in technology, such as advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
CFOs are also heavily involved in stakeholder management. According to the panellists, capital markets are demanding new and more integrated approaches to corporate reporting and, the concept of “organisational value” is being broadened to include the role and impact that companies have on aspects such as the environment. CFOs will need to work hard to ensure investors, customers, employees and society as a whole continue to support their businesses.
Rick Payne, Technical Manager, ICAEW Business and Management Faculty, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a range of financial and strategic challenges. CFOs and boards have had to take complex, wide-reaching decisions on a daily basis which impact not only on their stakeholders and employees, but the wider economy as a whole. We commend regional finance leaders who have worked extremely hard and shown resilience in helping businesses by quickly changing strategic direction in order to remain viable but also looking ahead to how their businesses can prosper in the future.”
