News built for finance pros
CFO Brew helps finance pros navigate their roles with insights into risk management, compliance, and strategy through our newsletter, virtual events, and digital guides.
“Custodians of the numbers and guardians of compliance.”
That’s how one executive (and, we’re guessing, a regular presence at renaissance festivals) described the traditional role of a controller in a new EY survey.
To keep up the knightly language, the controller of the future will gain more liberty to undertake side quests if they enlist automation and AI to aid in the guardianship, according to EY.
Back in modern terms, that means that in addition to protecting value, the financial controller role will shift to value creation, including “developing and funding business strategy,” sharing data analysis to support leadership, and leading financial transformation initiatives, according to EY, which heard from nearly 1,300 controllers and finance leaders. Four in 10 respondents agreed that’s the direction their role is headed over the next five years. There’s near unanimity, too, that the controller job will be changing in a big way: 86% said it will look a lot different in 2029. So different, in fact, that one in four (26%) said they don’t even know what skills a controller will need by then.
Crystal balls aside. EY has some ideas for how controllers can start expanding their purview right now, starting with “embrac[ing] three transformational opportunities: data, artificial intelligence, and sustainability,” as well as taking steps to “get future ready” and “become a more confident controller.”
If they’re not already, controllers should be using that natural authority with enterprise data “to recommend strategic opportunities” based on their analysis, which 88% currently do.
Data-based recs can also help avoid strategic pitfalls, as Toby Grayson, VP of financial control at Woodside Energy—and supplier of the chivalric analogy at the top of this story—shared with EY.
“If the business is contemplating a strategic transaction, we might advise on the balance sheet implications in terms of shareholder value,” he said. “There can be real shareholder value erosion if the accounting implications are not fully understood—for example, impacts on the credit rating or dividend flows.”
Mandatory AI reference. Controllers should also be finding new use cases for AI to transform the business, “building confidence” in the tech, the report said. Tamara Schock, chief accounting officer at MetLife, told EY the company is trying out different AI products so it’ll “pick the right tool to meet our objectives” instead of slapping new tech “on top of older systems.”
“We’re also trying to get our workforce sufficiently skilled, so that they’re ready for when we can implement some of these tools at scale,” Schock said.
Spare a thought. EY also suggested that controllers get more involved in their organization’s ESG reporting. The firm’s research shows that 99% of investors today consider corporate ESG disclosures as a part of their investment decision-making, and with their data expertise, controllers are well placed to make that reporting more robust, according to the report. But just 43% of controllers said they expected “to be frequently involved” with ESG planning and reporting five years from now.