Chief financial officers in Southeast Asia are well-placed to play a more strategic role in their organisations, making them more qualified to take on their companies' top job in the future.
EY's 2023 Global DNA of the CFO study reveals that finance leaders in the region can unlock strategic business value and potentially realise the ambition of becoming a CEO.
In essence, in the road to attaining the organisation's top job, CFOs must demonstrate the ability to build consensus across the C-suite and balance risk with innovation and bold transformation.
CFOs must also learn to adapt their skill sets to change and develop the next generation of senior finance leaders.
While the CFO role has grown more demanding and complex, it has also become one of the most rewarding and exciting positions in the C-suite.
Finance professionals in Southeast Asia increasingly see the CFO role as a stepping-stone to the CEO position. According to the study, which covered 1,000 CFOs and senior finance leaders worldwide, found that 48% of respondents in the region are targeting the top job in the long term. Only 42% in Southeast Asia were content with the CFO role as their long-term goal, lower than the global average of 47%.
To help achieve their CEO ambitions, CFOs will need to embrace boldness, unlock value for their teams and drive success across their organizations. Businesses in Southeast Asia are grappling with ongoing economic uncertainty, challenging market conditions and new stakeholder expectations.
This puts CFOs under pressure to digitally transform finance operations to provide faster, more insightful reporting as well as support evidence-based decisions across the enterprise.
Those who step up boldly to the challenge have important opportunities to demonstrate vision and enterprise-wide leadership, and ambitious CFOs should address their priorities.
