The modern finance function is the kitchen of the organisation

The modern home kitchen is generally a hive of activity where everyone in the home feels comfortable and can access fuel (food and water) to tackle their day. It is also the place where informal collaboration feels natural. The modern finance function is also a central place that should facilitate collaboration, simplify access to information, and provide analysis and insights that fuel growth and innovation. This is where planning, budgeting, resource stewardship and therefore strategic enablement happens. Just as the kitchens of today look vastly different to those constructed 20 years ago, finance functions need to make sure they are embracing new technologies, ways of working and meeting the needs of the front line to drive growth and to manage risk. 

Some key opportunities that can be considered by modern CFOs include: 

  • How are new technologies (including AI) helping the organisation drive growth in a safe way? 

  • How is the organisation encouraging innovation and then quickly assessing and managing risk? 

  • When is the last time you sat down with your executive peers to ask how finance can help them achieve growth? 

  • Is the finance function organised in a way that facilitates growth, innovation, risk management and collaboration? 

  • Is reporting and market communication more broadly an authentic representation of the business, its strategy and its opportunity? 

KSIB welcomes these challenges, and its executive team and associates have worked with hundreds of finance functions in a range of capacities. 

KSIB Case Study 1

Case Study 01

The risk management system and the CFO

The approach

The modern CFO plays a critical role in leading the risk management system for the organisation.

  • Even in a global financial services organisation with a mature 3 lines of defence model and a strong risk culture and function, the CFO plays a critical risk management role, for both financial and non-financial risk.
  • KSIB and its partner, Newton Russell, have been working together with large financial institutions to transform their risk management systems. The transformation involves the following process:
    • Understanding current roles and risk management processes across the first 2 lines of defence.
    • Accelerating the visualisation of critical processes and controls using AI enabled tooling.
    • Eliminating redundant processes and controls; streamlining key processes and controls.
    • Testing key controls continuously using AI agents with transparent and auditable tests.
    • Reporting and visualising key control breakdowns immediately to control owners and executives using AI agents.
  • The unstructured data underpinning the current risk management system (word documents, excel etc) is "cleaned" iteratively throughout this process, so the transformation does not need to rely on a perfect dataset.
  • This approach transforms risk management from a reactive activity to a proactive activity.

Outcomes

  • The CFO will be able to proactively monitor risks and continuously test both IT and business process controls.
  • Role clarity is clear and defined, for humans and agents.
  • All key controls are continuously tested.
  • Any required remediation actions are surfaced immediately and suggested to the control owner by the agents.
  • The agentic system and its recommendations are able to be challenged and audited through transparent sharing of tests and outcomes.
  • The overall outcome is significantly better risk management.