“Leadership with EQ is my mantra,” Kabir Ahmed Shakir, CFO of Tata Communications, wrote on his LinkedIn page. It may seem like an unusual sentiment for someone who heads up finance for one of India’s largest telecoms, but a conversation with Shakir reveals that people skills have been a constant throughout his career. His EQ has been instrumental in growing Tata Communications from a company satisfied with average performance to a global giant. Here are some of the leadership lessons he shared with CFO Brew.

EQ trumps IQ: Before joining Tata, Shakir was CFO of Microsoft in India after spending 23 years with Unilever. When he was a VP at the CPG company, he asked his mentor, an SVP, what he could do to make it to the next level. His mentor told him that technical skills would only take him so far. “‘Those are table stakes,’ he said,” Shakir remembered. “‘If there is something that’s going to really take you further from here, it’s going to be people management skills.’”

Shakir took the advice to heart. He defines leadership as being so inspiring to staff that they’re looking forward to work even during their off hours. “That’s true leadership. It’s not Monday through Friday when I pay your salary,” he said.

Keep reading here.—CV

The intersection between finance and technology has always been challenging to navigate as it is constantly evolving. If you wanna stay at the forefront of the fintech game, look no further than Nasdaq.

Their new Financial Technology Division provides end-to-end, mission-critical technology solutions to financial institutions that can help boost efficiency, simplify operational complexity, and drive growth at scale.

Drawing on their deep industry experience and technology expertise, Nasdaq helps 3,500+ banks, brokers, regulators, financial infrastructure operators, and buy-side firms solve their toughest operational challenges—all while questioning today to rewrite tomorrow.

Step into the future.

If you thought RTO mandates were so 2023, think again.

In a memo to staff, PwC UK announced that, as of January 2025, employees will need to work in the office or with clients “a minimum of three days a week,” multiple news organizations reported. That’s a change from its previous policy, which mandated that staff work onsite or with clients two to three days per week.

And, in a move perhaps appropriate for the country that brought us George Orwell and Black Mirror, PwC will be tracking workers’ location data. The firm will share the data with 26,000 UK-based employees and their career coaches on a monthly basis.

The PwC memo suggests that staff might not have been following the hybrid work policy closely enough for the firm’s liking. “The previous guidance of at least two to three days a week was open to interpretation,” it stated. A PwC spokesperson told the Guardian that if an employee failed to comply with the policy, the firm would “hope to be able to reach a resolution informally before going down any disciplinary route.”

Keep reading here.—CV

Insurance firms, technology companies, and governments, assemble! It’s time for an Avengers: Endgame-style battle against the world’s cyber threats.

Minus the MCU reference, that’s more or less the message that insurance carrier Zurich and insurance broker Marsh McLennan convey in a new white paper.

“Cyber threats are outpacing the ability of traditional insurance and risk management approaches to fully mitigate them,” according to the paper’s foreword, signed by Marsh McLennan president and CEO John Doyle and Zurich Group CEO Mario Greco. “The resulting cyber risk protection gap is a societal challenge that urgently needs collective action from both the insurance industry and the public sector.”

What’s at stake? Cybercrime is expected to only get more expensive, and quickly. The global cost of cybercrime could exceed $13.8 trillion in 2028, according to Statista research. And while it’s true that cyber insurance has made strides to help organizations cover this growing risk—reinsurer Munich Re predicts the global market will be approximately $29 billion in 2027—the cyber market protection gap (the chasm between insured and uninsured losses) was roughly $900 billion, according to a 2023 report by the Global Federation of Insurance Associations.

Keep reading here.—AZ

Stay in the know. Plaid is sharing four finance trends that could drive growth in your biz. Learn how pay by bank can benefit you and your customers and how to fight the latest fraud tactics. Get up to speed on finance’s biggest trends and future-proof your product roadmap with the report.