The CFO Playbook

In the latest episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by Giles Andrews OBE, co-founder of Zopa, the world’s first P2P lending business launched in 2004, to discuss two decades working in FinTech and the role of artificial intelligence in shaping the financial services of the future.

Finding himself as an accidental CFO in the early days of Zopa thanks to an accountancy qualification, Giles progressed to CEO and Chairman and is still an active Board Member, responsible for in excess of £4bn in loans in the UK, and revolutionising the way we look at banking.

Reflecting on the economic storms faced globally over the past few years, Giles offers an insider's perspective on the 2008 financial crisis, revealing how it inadvertently fuelled Zopa's growth by transforming the lending landscape. Now managing a diverse portfolio, from the intricacies of Zopa's operations to Chair of online automotive marketplace CarWow, Giles is all too familiar with the challenges faced against a backdrop of evolving consumer behaviour and digital upheaval.

In a world now captivated by artificial intelligence, he shares his thoughts on the positives in work efficiency and improved user experience in customer service, but expresses concerns about ethics and governance, especially in financial services. Balancing innovation and regulation, Giles highlights the importance of ethical leadership and community spirit to ensure a prosperous ecosystem for businesses of all sizes, whilst embracing advancements in technology.

Chapters -

(0:00:00) - Financial Leadership and Innovation

(0:12:21) - Navigating Financial Crisis and Growth

(0:19:25) - Recent Financial Sector Collapses and Innovation

(0:24:08) - Innovation in Banking and AI

(0:36:06) - Ethics and Privacy in AI Governance

(0:41:54) - Issue of Financial Engineering in Business

Entries for the Global CFO 100 Awards in partnership with HotTopics are now open - https://hottopics.ht/global-cfo-100-awards-nominations. Entries close 31st August 2024.

About Soldo:

Soldo provides company cards connected to a powerful management platform. Employees use Soldo cards to buy what they need for work without being out of pocket or going over budget. Finance teams use Soldo to distribute money instantly, while staying in control of who spends, how much, where, and on what.

Thousands of businesses, from small to large corporations including Mercedes-Benz, Sony, and Get Your Guide use Soldo to make their business spending simple and efficient.

To find out more or to book a demo, visit Soldo.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland explores how financial management should be embedded into company culture with Richard Dana, co-founder and CEO at Tembo Money.

With a background in corporate finance, Richard shares how he leveraged his interest in travel to co-found the budget-boutique hotel booking platform Doris and Dickie, and the lessons learned from being thrifty in balancing the books from day one with a small team, managing by cost.

Reflecting on his role as CFO at Founders Factory, a unique platform matching leading corporate brands with industry expertise with innovative start-ups to solve specific pain points within their sector. Richard affirms his mantra that founders should focus on being thrifty and making every pound work hard, whilst having a path to profitability and a clear understanding of the financials.

Now on a mission to address the housing affordability crisis, Richard co-founded family lending platform Tembo Money, with the aim of closing the generational wealth gap by broadening access to homeownership. With no CFO currently in place, the focus since its launch in 2020 has been on becoming profitable with a lean team and outsourced accountancy. Richard highlights that despite the crossovers between the CFO and CEO roles, there is a much greater focus on "selling the business" as a CEO, whilst keeping an eye on the money during the early days of growing a new business.

Finally, against the backdrop of the current economic landscape, Richard gives his view on starting a business in a recession; although it's challenging, partnering with established companies and focusing on a product with a real customer need can help mitigate risks. Extending cash runway is crucial for startups, and involves monitoring cash flow, cutting costs, and exploring non-investment funding options.

Chapters -

(0:00:01) - Inside the World of Finance Leaders

(0:13:29) - Building a Finance Startup

(0:22:45) - Funding and Recruitment for Startups

(0:33:57) - Startup Strategies and Acquisition Considerations

(0:43:39) - Liberating Finance for Families

Entries for the Global CFO 100 Awards in partnership with HotTopics are now open - https://hottopics.ht/global-cfo-100-awards-nominations. Entries close 31st August 2024.

About Soldo:

Soldo provides company cards connected to a powerful management platform. Employees use Soldo cards to buy what they need for work without being out of pocket or going over budget. Finance teams use Soldo to distribute money instantly, while staying in control of who spends, how much, where, and on what.

Thousands of businesses, from small to large corporations including Mercedes-Benz, Sony, and Get Your Guide use Soldo to make their business spending simple and efficient.

To find out more or to book a demo, visit Soldo.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With growth at the heart of the recent Spring Budget, how can companies fuel productivity and accomplish more? On March 13th, 2024, business and economics experts met at the London Stock Exchange to decode the Chancellor’s Spring Budget at an event hosted by Soldo.

This live episode of The CFO Playbook is hosted by David McClelland and features an expert panel -

David Owen, Chief Economist, Saltmarsh Economics 

Liz Earle MBE of Liz Earle Wellbeing

Emma Heal, MD at Lucky Saint

Carlo Gualandri, CEO of Soldo

Chapters -

(00:00) - Productivity and Growth Challenges in the UK

(11:54) - Economic Growth and Productivity Opportunities

(21:58) - CFO-CEO Partnership for Business Success

(30:33) - Impacts of AI on Business Operations

(39:40) - AI Technology and Future Industry Trends

(53:41) - Summary of Support in the Spring Budget

Entries for the Global CFO 100 Awards in partnership with HotTopics are now open - https://hottopics.ht/global-cfo-100-awards-nominations. Entries close 31st August 2024.

About Soldo:

Soldo provides company cards connected to a powerful management platform. Employees use Soldo cards to buy what they need for work without being out of pocket or going over budget. Finance teams use Soldo to distribute money instantly, while staying in control of who spends, how much, where, and on what.

Thousands of businesses, from small to large corporations including Mercedes-Benz, Sony, and Get Your Guide use Soldo to make their business spending simple and efficient.

To find out more or to book a demo, visit Soldo.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a new series of The CFO Playbook, brought to you by Soldo.

In this episode, our new host, technology reporter, presenter and consumer champion, David McClelland talks to Baron Anyangwe, a finance leader, about his journey and insights into leadership.

They discuss the importance of flexibility and passion in career choices, the impact of volunteering, and Baron’s own holistic leadership framework. The framework includes principles such as widening perspectives, finding meaningful work, focusing on strengths, and setting milestones for progress.

Baron emphasises the importance of markers and milestones in guiding progress and decision-making, including the 6 Ps of success: Purpose, Principles, Priorities, Progress, Play, and People Skills. The episode also explores the value of playfulness in fostering creativity and innovation, whilst retaining the need for experimentation and adaptability in finance leadership.

This episode also delves into the rise of B Corp businesses and the challenges and opportunities they present for sustainability, reflecting on the concept of liberating finance and the role of finance leaders in driving positive change.

Chapters -

(0:00:01) - Leadership Framework

(0:11:12) - Protect the Magic, Ditch the Rest

(0:18:29) - Play, People Skills in Finance

(0:27:31) - Balancing Long-Term Sustainability in Business

(0:39:13) - Evolving Finance for Sustainable Business

Entries for the Global CFO 100 Awards in partnership with HotTopics are now open - https://hottopics.ht/global-cfo-100-awards-nominations. Entries close 31st August 2024.

About Soldo:

Soldo provides company cards connected to a powerful management platform. Employees use Soldo cards to buy what they need for work without being out of pocket or going over budget. Finance teams use Soldo to distribute money instantly, while staying in control of who spends, how much, where, and on what.

Thousands of businesses, from small to large corporations including Mercedes-Benz, Sony, and Get Your Guide use Soldo to make their business spending simple and efficient.

To find out more or to book a demo, visit Soldo.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Ed Lu, Chief Financial Officer at Fandom, a San Francisco-based gaming and entertainment community platform.

Ed is a gaming and media tech executive with deep finance, strategy and operational experiences focused on VC and PE-backed Gaming and B2C companies. He holds a Master’s in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s in Economics from UC Berkeley.

In this episode, Ed talks about the explosive growth of the gaming industry over the course of the pandemic, the impact that generative AI will have on game development, and the ups and downs of the financial investment side of the sector.

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Guest Quotes:

“A lot of these [gaming] companies have had to somewhat bootstrap themselves, right? Or like, on a shoestring budget, get something out, show the metrics that the VCs will understand, ‘Oh, okay, I get it. Here's the D1, here's the D3, D7, D28, here's the monetization, here's the ARPU, whatnot. I can now project it out further.’ But they're not getting funding prior, right? And so they've been coming into the game a little later, like sort of post traction.” - Ed Lu

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Topics:

01:34 Ed’s background

06:53 The evolution of monetization in online gaming 

15:44 Trials and tribulations of game development

20:21 Investment in the gaming sector

30:03 Downsides of VC investing

40:12 Managing employee retention as a CFO

49:24 Reflecting on his career

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Ed on LinkedIn

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

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This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Bill Fahrbach, Chief Financial Officer at Facet, offering impartial and invaluable financial advice and services at an affordable membership fee.

Bill is a strategic Financial Executive and Entrepreneurial CFO/COO with an extensive investment banking background and rounded technology operational experience. With a track record of significant growth, capital raises, and exits, he’s a leader in finance, operations, systems, and legal capacities.

In this episode, Bill talks about the changing dynamics between CFO and CEO, the importance of a healthy work-life balance, and how a primarily remote-first culture affects the pathway to becoming a CFO.

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Guest Quotes:

“I think what has changed is, if you think about the CFO role, it's really critically important that you get the right information out to the organization. So, the organization wants to understand how we are doing as a business, and it's not as simple as sort of just saying like, look, here are the numbers, right? There's a lot of color, there's a lot of context. So I would say as CFO, it's been challenging. It's actually pushed probably the limits in terms of like how do you communicate effectively with the employee base, whereas when you're in the office in a physical office, it's more natural, I guess you could say, and more seamless to sort of be having routine discussions with, employees across the board and articulating, you know, the good, the bad, and everything in between and getting that message across. In a virtual environment, what I've found is that the struggle is always finding that balance of how do I get the right message out in the right forums. And not create, let's say, like a drain of unnecessary meetings that people get bored in, right? So, it's finding that balance, you know, articulating the right information, but also giving the right context in a way that employees will be engaged. I'd say that was, that's been the biggest challenge.” - Bill Fahrbach

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Topics:

00:38 Bill’s role and adjusting to remote work

03:49 How a remote first culture affects the pathway to CFO

07:51 Educational background

13:19 Dynamics between CFO and CEO

17:53 Facilitating company acquisitions

21:47 Work life balance

24:23 About Facet and IPO

29:18 Best decision he’s ever made

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Andy Dean, Chief Financial Officer at Eden Futures, providing high quality, person-centered care, supported living and enablement for people with disabilities and support needs.

At Eden Futures, Andy leads the Finance, Service Development and IT teams. Prior, he started his career training with KPMG as a Chartered Accountant, gaining experience within both Audit and Transaction Services. He has since worked for a variety of care providers in social care starting with Craegmoor as Group Financial Accountant. From there he gained broader experience at GKN plc before joining what became Embrace Group in 2012 as Group Financial Controller. Andy helped to manage the recovery and subsequent sale of that business before joining Eden Futures.

In this episode, Andy talks about the current state of social care in the UK, his work as a leader for teams in finance, service development, and IT, and how policies, politics, and technology affect the space.

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Guest Quotes:

“ Part of your role, as CFO, is that wide base of stakeholders. You can be talking to your shareholder one day. You can be talking to your lender another day. You can be talking to your insurer. You know, CFOs like me are often responsible for the IT, so get involved in the IT discussions, talking to our customers. So, in our case, our commissioning partners around whatever issue it might be, say fee rates, occupancy. Get involved with the lawyers that are on the contractual side. So yes, it is a varied role. You know, the old adage that 'no day is ever the same' is absolutely right from a CFO perspective.” - Andy Dean

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Topics:

01:37 Andy’s background and role as CFO

07:22 Current state of social care in the UK

13:14 Technology in social care

17:43 Employee retention and politics

21:00 Dealing with uncertainties

25:45 Mentorship

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn

Eden Futures Website

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Chris Voss, Founder and CEO of The Black Swan Group. Previously, Chris was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. 

Chris used his many years of experience in international crises and high-stakes negotiations to develop a unique program that applies globally proven techniques to the business world. Through the Black Swan Group, he provides training for a variety of businesses and individuals on negotiation skills. He’s also the author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It.

In this episode, Chris and I talk about how he became an FBI hostage negotiator, what a CFO can learn from negotiation, and the three biggest mistakes to avoid when negotiating.

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Guest Quotes:

“Really counterintuitive stuff, this thing that we call empathy, you know, we call tactical empathy. It's ability to influence, if you can wrap your mind around what it really is, it works under all circumstances. Doesn't matter, as long as human beings are involved, whether it's a colleague, whether it's a client, whether it's an employee, whether it's somebody you work for, it seems mystical because it really operates on neuroscience and the feelings of being understood. But human beings are wired to be completely emotional. You know, every decision, you make up your mind based on what you care about, which makes decision making an emotional process because your fundamental basis is what you care about. And so then it's just applied emotional intelligence. And you know you can succeed in the boardroom or work with what I learned dealing with a drug dealer or a terrorist.” - Chris Voss

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Topics:

03:02 How to become an FBI hostage negotiator

03:41 What a CFO can learn from negotiation

12:52 Three biggest mistakes in negotiation

18:45 Achieving outcomes

22:28 In-person versus digital communication

27:38 Real life stories

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

The Black Swan Group LTD

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at University of Oxford and Co-author of The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups.

Professor Dunbar is British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behavior. He is best known for formulating Dunbar’s number, a measurement of the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.” His research is concerned with trying to understand the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms that underpin social bonding in primates and humans.

In this episode, Professor Dunbar talks about how evolution affects the dynamics of organizations, the seven pillars of friendship, the impact of work on personal relationships, and the observable changes in a sense of community overtime.

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Guest Quotes:

“In a C-suite level, you have to find ways of sharing your time and not micromanaging everything, that's where the disaster comes, I think, because you destroy everything. You try and micromanage the whole of a big organization, not only do you make a hash of that because it's too big, but you also don't have any time left over for your family relationships and so on, and they fall apart. So, you’ve got to trust the people you work with, as it were, below you, in the layers below you to do their job, and that has to be the culture. And, there are places where that happens, you have this sense of trust and obligation and people work willingly, as it were, and overwork, maybe,  willingly, not for the money they're paid but out of a sense of pride and obligation to the job they do. If you encourage that kind of attitude again, which used to be much more common, then you don't have to worry about what's going on down below because that's being taken care of in the layers below you. You can sit back and deal with strategy, which is what C-suite folks should be really concerned with because, and sparing yourself enough time at the corners of the day to invest in your own kind of family and social environments.” - Robin Dunbar

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Topics:

02:51 Introducing Robin’s book: The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups

06:35 How evolution affects the dynamics of organizations

11:36 The seven pillars of friendship

18:21 Difference in application for group sizes in a workplace setting

30:32 Generational changes in the sense of community

38:47 The impact of work on personal relationships

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Robin on LinkedIn

The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Tom Herbert, Tech Editor at AccountingWEB, the largest independent online community for accounting and finance professionals in the UK.

Tom is a journalist, editor and broadcaster with experience across digital and print publications. For the past seven years, he’s specialized in business, accountancy and technology journalism. He writes and edits news, features, interviews and opinion pieces and also features on a variety of podcasts, videos and webinars as both a host and guest.

In this episode, Tom talks about ChatGPT and the future of AI, the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation, The Tyranny of Expense Reclaim, and his opinions on accountancy stereotypes.

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Guest Quotes:

“I think that accountants, the stereotype is, Nigel in the corner office with his spreadsheet, and they're incredibly boring people, like Monty Python and various others have spread this around. But, I actually find accountants incredibly entertaining. I think they're generally very quirky, quite eccentric, and often quite blunt. But, when I pitched up in 2015, after, as you said, a series of events, writing, travel, writing, sports, journalism, like my wife's, yeah, ‘accounting journalism, are you sure?’ But, yeah, I've loved every minute of it, genuinely. It's been great fun.” - Tom Herbert

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Topics:

03:54 Chat GPT and AI

10:21 Silicon Valley Bank

14:14 Resumes and trust

18:44 The Tyranny of Expense Reclaim

24:44 Opinions on accountancy stereotypes

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Sponsor:

This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com

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Links:

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn

Connect with Fran on LinkedIn

The CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices