Once seen primarily as the guardians of financial health, today’s rapidly changing business environment has driven CFOs to evolve into strategic leaders at the heart of today’s businesses.

With the UK economy stalling, growing by just 0.1% between July and September 2024, alongside lingering uncertainty from the latest budget announcement, CFOs find themselves at the helm of navigating turbulence. Their role is now more prominent than ever, with the responsibility of steering their organisations towards sustainable success amid rising pressures.

CFOs must now balance governance with growth, be both operational and strategic, and remain profit-driven while also focusing on purpose-led objectives.

Investor expectations, beyond the numbers

Investors today are looking further than the balance sheet. They seek leaders who can articulate a clear vision of growth and demonstrate the operational agility to execute it effectively. For many investors, the CFO has become a bellwether of a company’s future potential.

Findings from our recent report, Finance 2035: Return to Investment, show that 83% of investors in the UK need to see the CFO as an ambitious driver of corporate growth before committing to an investment.

CFOs who can influence areas traditionally outside their remit, such as market expansion, digital transformation, and ESG initiatives, are reshaping investor perception of strong leadership.

Finance leaders who successfully embody this broader, strategy-led approach can reap an increased investment premium by an average of 2.6%. This increases to 3.6% among top global asset managers.

In addition, sustainability has emerged as a key priority, with 88% of investors stating that they are more likely to back organisations with comprehensive net-zero plans. As ESG expectations evolve, the CFO’s role is expanding beyond traditional financial oversight to understand regulatory requirements, how to capture and measure ESG data effectively, and also analyse it in a way to drive strategic business decisions.

By demonstrating proficiency in balancing fiscal discipline with innovative strategies, CFOs are reshaping what it takes to gain and retain investor confidence in today’s volatile economy.

Mounting pressure

While CFOs are increasingly recognised as lynchpins for corporate growth, meeting these expectations is far from straightforward. As the demands of the CFO role grow, so does the complexity of the challenges they face.

Today’s finance leaders must excel in disciplines ranging from data analytics and AI to risk management and market analysis, capabilities that are essential for delivering the detailed, actionable insights that investors require. However, many CFOs are hindered by legacy systems, siloed operations, and talent shortages, limiting their ability to meet both immediate and strategic objectives. Manual, ineffectual tasks further burden finance teams, diverting time from value-add initiatives. Modernising the finance function through automation, AI and machine learning, can free up teams to focus on data-driven strategy and cross-departmental collaboration.

We found that 77% of UK investors require CFOs to demonstrate a blend of technical, operational, and strategic expertise. Failing to embrace these advancements risks not only eroding investor confidence but also falling behind competitors.

Meeting these expectations is important not only for securing investment, but to enable CFOs to be leading with clarity and confidence.

The CFO-CEO dynamic

The relationship between the CFO and CEO has always been important, but in today’s environment, it has taken on even greater significance.

While CEOs set the overarching vision, CFOs are instrumental in executing long-term plans, responsible for ensuring that strategies are not only financially viable, but also operationally sustainable.

This dynamic has not gone unnoticed by investors. CFO competency now ranks as the second most important factor in investment decisions, surpassing CEO competency, which ranks seventh. This prioritisation reflects an evolving perception of CFOs as not just financial stewards, but agents of change.

Investors see a CFO’s ability to align vision with execution as essential to effective corporate governance. To meet this expectation, CFOs must complement the CEO’s leadership by ensuring that ambitious strategies are grounded in both financial and operational reality.

Shaping the future of corporate growth

The stakes have never been higher. And as the CFO role evolves, their influence has never been greater.

To drive the future of their organisations and the confidence of those who invest in them, finance leaders must not only master their traditional responsibilities, but balance a strategic, data-driven and purposeful approach.

The actions that these leaders take today will define corporate growth over the next decade—not only defining success in the short term, but laying the foundation for sustained growth and resilience in an era increasingly marked by its uncertainty.

Bill Koefoed is chief financial officer at OneStream software