RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: A CFO Summit on “Looking Forward to Navigating a Rising Tide” was organised under the aegis of the ICMA Pakistan, here on Thursday. It was second such summit.

First session of the CFO Summit focused on the sub-theme of ‘Cultivating Finance Leaders to face Future Turmoil.’ After that, a panel discussion on making departure from business of finance to embracing organizations’ business was held. The third and last session was planned on sub-theme of “Governance vs. Business – A Challenging Role for CFO.”

Speaking at the summit, Mohammad Iqbal Ghori, president of the ICMA Pakistan said that CFO had positive connection with the profession of management accounting.

“In fact, cost management is one of the top priorities of a CFO in addition to profitability, cash-flow and working capital. The management accountants are best choice for CFO position because they are trusted to guide critical business decisions and drive strong business performance,” he said adding that they combined financial expertise and business acumen to achieve sustainable success.

He said that several researches conducted to find out which skills were pre-requisites for future CFOs and they highlighted that the CFO should be skilled in three broader business knowledge areas i.e. knowledge about business value drivers; industry trends and risk landscape. Similarly, the future CFO should also be well abreast with three finance knowledge areas viz. financial insight, strategic planning and risk management. He said that the CFO must determine which skill set he or she needed to adopt to become successful.

Anisur Rehman, vice president, ICMA Pakistan & Chairman CPD Committee in his presentation said that businesses were becoming more global, competitive, regulated and digital with the advancement in technology.

“The future CFO must see their role evolving with the change in global business scenario. A CFO with just finance and accounting backgrounds will not be capable enough to cope up with the changing trend in business today. To become a successful CFO, one needs to acquire knowledge, skills and experiences outside of finance and play a more strategic role in organizations,” he exhorted.

For instance, he said, the regulatory and reporting requirements in almost every country were becoming stringent. He said in future the successful CFO must work more closely with the regulators so that they could understand why their organizations might like to take a specific decision in response to any change in policy, market dynamics and technology forces.

“Similarly, as you all know that digital technology is rapidly changing the way business is being operated and the value it provides to organizations,” he said adding that future CFOs should therefore, be more strategic in thinking as to how they could help drive their organizations, transform themselves to a more digitally-oriented world. He said they needed to be digitally- sophisticated and tech-savvy in order to leverage technological innovations.

Muhammad Haroon Rasheed, executive director, State Bank of Pakistan said that a successful CFO was in fact the right hand of a CEO and, on top of his financial expertise, also helped him in managing business, complementing skills and offering leadership.

“He must keep the board and its sub-committees well-informed of business and regulatory requirements and changes. As strategic thinker, a CFO must deliver the business results and align strategy across the enterprise and transform operating model,” he urged stressing on the need to play the leading role in keeping investors well-informed about the company and ensure that the company maintained an open and transparent communication with its investors in order to build and enhance investors’ confidence.

During the panel discussion, the panelists Muhammad Ashraf Bawany, chief executive & managing director of Linde Pakistan, Tariq Sultan, a member finance PTA, Aamer Naseer, director of Unilever, Muhammad Hanif Idrees, director DHL and Muhammad Lukman, CEO of NCCPL said that with the emerging capital market function, a CFO’s role had also changed dramatically. They were of the views that today’s CFOs were now very much involved in decisions relating to financing and raising capital, financial, capital and enterprise risk managements, strategic planning, investors relations and analysis of business unit performance. They said that a CFO had also to implement cost-saving measures in his role within the company management.

Khalid Mehmood, a member of the CPD Committee moderated the panel discussion.

Mr. Aga Jan Akhtar, Chairman, Port Qasim Authority said that in the coming years, the CFO has also a changing role towards the society at large. He is expected to connect financial management with sustainability which is now considered as a key element in business strategy, performance and growth. Today, CFOs are getting involved in the management, measurement and reporting of the CSR activities. This involvement has expanded the CFO’s role in ways that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. CFOs key areas in its role in sustainability are investors’ relations, external reporting and operational control and financial risk management.

Mr. Javed Jabbar, Film-maker, Policy analyst, Former Senator and Federal Minister opined that the CFO’s Role in Pakistan is also changing from ‘Stewardship’ to ‘Strategist’. They are now seen as organizational leaders and ‘Business Partners’ in addition to their role as financial gatekeeper. In many organizations in Pakistan, CFOs are now an integral part of strategic business decision making. In my opinion, the Pakistani CFO must play the role of ‘Chief Investment Officer’ for business growth and sustaining industry performance. They need to re-design financial and business models to attract investors and change their mind set from ‘Cost Saving’ to “Intelligent spending’.

Mr. Shaukat Tarin, S. I. Advisor the Chairman, Silkbank Ltd. who was the Chief Guest on the occasion said that said that now-a-days, we are witnessing such a rapidly changing global business environment that even corporations, working since decades, are finding it difficult to survive and sustain businesses. The corporate thinkers believe that the only solution to meet this challenge is to hire professionals who have more strategic skill sets. In this context, the CFOs are one such professional who possesses the desired skill sets that can help a company navigate a riskier and rapidly changing environment.

Other speakers of the Summit included, Mr. Junaid Jamshed, Entrepreneur and Media Personality, Mr. Mohammed Hanif Ajari, Former Vice President, ICMA Pakistan.