CFOs know there are plenty of risks to worry about in the new year. And many also now find themselves leading their organization’s risk management planning.

So when a geopolitics expert tells an audience of risk and insurance pros that many organizations do not place enough emphasis on risk management, we listen and we don’t judge.

“All too often in firms of various size, risk management…may exist, there may be people in a risk management department, but their warnings are sometimes background noise to the imperatives of the business strategy,” Michael Mazarr, senior political scientist at Rand, said recently during a webinar hosted by insurance carrier Travelers.

Mazarr may be a political scientist, but he draws upon his experience examining the lessons learned in risk management following the 2008 global financial crisis.

Things are getting messy. In this incredibly crazy world where it seems impossible to predict what’s coming next, volatility is now the name of the game, according to Mazarr.

Click here for more on prioritizing risk management.—AZ

Can we get an amen?

Enrollment in undergraduate accounting programs grew in the fall 2024 semester, climbing to a four year high, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Undergraduate accounting enrollment totaled 267,278 students, a 12% increase from fall 2023.

Graduate accounting enrollment painted a slightly less rosy picture, decreasing 2.8% from the prior fall. But overall accounting enrollment, even with the dip in graduate students, still jumped 10.5% year over year. The good news is that’s a higher percentage jump than the 4.5% enrollment increase all other majors saw.

We needed this, to put it mildly. Between the 2012–2013 and 2021–2022 school years, accounting enrollment dropped 16.9%, per the Journal of Accountancy.

“The pipeline is broken,” Kimberly Reeve, dean of the Guarini School of Business at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, told CFO Brew back in 2023. “There is a crisis in the accounting industry where there are not enough accountants coming up through the ranks to take over for all the accounting practices that exist.”

Click here for more on the bump in accounting enrollment.—CV

It’s time to start a formal petition for renaming the CFO to the Swiss Army knife of the C-suite.

A new Gartner survey of 251 CFOs revealed that finance leaders are spearheading numerous non-financial priorities outside the realm of finance. Roughly three-quarters (76%) of respondents said they’re leading or co-leading their organization’s data and analytics (D&A) strategy to boost profitability.

Other non-financial initiatives that a majority of CFOs are taking on include enterprise risk management (70%), corporate strategy (68%), M&A (59%), and procurement (54%). Nearly half (43%) said they’re overseeing artificial intelligence initiatives.

Around four in 10 CFOs, give or take a few percentage points, are also leading initiatives on IT, real estate, cybersecurity, and ESG, respectively.

As CFO responsibility balloons, finance leaders are leaning on their leadership teams to handle more than “process execution and finance workflows,” Gartner noted. The firm advised that CFOs focus on developing the talent underneath them as they carry a larger load in areas outside the finance function.

Keep reading here.—AZ