Basic requirements of chief financial officer

Basic requirements of chief financial officer

Due to the particularity of CFO position, the CFO of the company is a professional group with high starting point, high requirements and high standards. So, what are the basic requirements of the company for CFO?

A, professional quality requirements

The financial management of the company's chief financial officer needs a lot of economic business processing and professional judgment. Every company hopes that the CFO it employs has the professional ability of accountant, management accountant and certified public accountant. Therefore, the company's chief financial officer mainly has the following requirements in terms of professional quality:

1, comprehensive and systematic knowledge of finance, accounting and auditing.

Finance and audit are the basic work of financial management. When organizing the company's accounting, financial management and financial control, the chief financial officer should ensure that the company's financial treatment is scientific, reasonable and legal, and provide comprehensive and correct accounting statements to the company's decision makers and external demanders in time, which is one of the daily tasks that every company's chief financial officer must complete. Without profound financial accounting knowledge, it is impossible.

The CFO is responsible for the audit of the company. A large number of audits and audit work require the CFO to have profound audit knowledge. The chief financial officer of the company is the highest person in charge of financial management of the company. The company's financial management is a very demanding job, and a large number of businesses need to use professional knowledge to make judgments. It is impossible to complete this work without systematic knowledge of finance, accounting and auditing.

2. Rich knowledge of company management

The chief financial officer of the company is one of the top managers of the company. In addition to the financial, accounting and auditing work within the scope of responsibilities, he should also participate in other management work of the company, involving all aspects of the company. Therefore, the CFO should master other company management knowledge, including company strategy, planning, value chain management, products, human resources and so on. Only when he has a comprehensive knowledge of company management can he play a role.

3. Comprehensive knowledge of economic law.

While managing the company's finance, the company's chief financial officer needs to assist the company's external institutions to audit and evaluate the company, be responsible for the company's external financing, asset mortgage, merger, joint venture, asset disposal and tax payment, participate in the company's listing, corporate bond issuance, economic contract drafting and signing, and handle the economic and legal affairs of the company and other units, which will involve a lot of economic and legal affairs and require comprehensive economic and legal knowledge. Therefore, the chief financial officer should not only master his own professional knowledge of finance, accounting, auditing standards, laws and regulations, but also have comprehensive legal knowledge of industry and commerce, taxation, bonds, insurance, mortgage, guarantee and labor law.

Second, the work ability requirements

The chief financial officer of the company is the comprehensive manager of the company's finance. Like any other manager, he must have comprehensive working ability, which generally includes the following aspects:

1, financial management ability

As the company's chief financial officer, financial management is the basic responsibility of his work and the first need of the chief financial officer. To handle and manage the company's finance well, it is necessary to maximize the company's value and pay attention to the ways of making money, gathering money and using money, which requires the chief financial officer to be familiar with the knowledge of financial management and have a strong sense of responsibility.

As the housekeeper of the company, the financial controller is fully responsible for the company's cash receipts and payments, fund allocation and cost sharing, which requires the company's financial controller to have comprehensive budget, plan control, system construction, investment decision-making ability and coordination ability in all aspects, and should manage the company's finances in an orderly manner to urge the company to save the saved money, earn back the money that the company deserves, and prevent the occurrence of company risks in the process of saving and earning.

2. Organization and coordination ability

As the highest person in charge of the company's financial institutions, the chief financial officer's daily work is to organize the company's financial accounting and cost control, coordinate the financial accounting relationship of all units within the company, and coordinate the financial relationship between the company and external banks, industry and commerce, taxation, securities and other departments.

Therefore, the chief financial officer should be familiar with all kinds of organizational forms, properly use the power of the organization to coordinate all aspects of human, financial and material relations, so as to achieve a dynamic balance, and should take various effective control measures to put all financial activities of the company within the company's control range, so as to achieve the expected results of the company and properly handle the interpersonal relationships among superiors, subordinates and peers. Properly handle the relationship between the company's creditor's rights, debtors, external stakeholders and government agencies at all levels, and properly handle the relationship between the company and social intermediary agencies, consulting agencies, securities institutions, etc. , to create a good environment for the company's production and operation.

3. Expression ability

The chief financial officer contains a lot of plans, reports and summaries in his daily work, so it is inevitable to communicate his professional decisions with relevant parties, and sometimes even to refute the decisions of the general manager or lobby board members. It is impossible without good oral and written expression skills.

The chief financial officer needs excellent writing skills, as well as the use of skills and art in speech, dialogue, report, discussion and negotiation, and can clearly express his views in short language and words. Therefore, he should read more books and study more, pay attention to the accumulation of knowledge, make more efforts in cultivating thinking ability and expression ability, and learn more and practice more in practice.

4. Decision-making ability

As the highest person in charge of the company's finance, the chief financial officer often has to make the final decision. Many decisions and decisions of the CFO play a vital role in the company's survival and development, which requires the CFO to have high decision-making ability, high abstract thinking ability and judgment ability in the work process, systematically and orderly think about the company's production and operation, gain insight into the company's value chain and value-added process, accurately predict the development of the situation, and quickly respond to the company's survival and development.

Third, the strategic capability requirements.

If a CFO has only the above three abilities, he can only be a good financial manager or chief financial officer, which is worse than the requirements of the company's chief financial officer. In addition to dealing with daily financial control and coordinating financial relations, the company's chief financial officer is most important to participate in the formulation of the company's strategy, formulate a financial strategy that serves the company's strategy according to the company's strategic needs, strategically lead the company's financial work, and integrate the company's resources.

The chief financial officer's strategic ability is mainly manifested in the following three aspects:

1, strategic analysis ability

The development of everything has its own laws, and qualitative change is the product of quantitative change accumulated to a certain extent. As the company's chief financial officer, we should be able to analyze the laws of the company's financial data and social development, analyze the opportunities and challenges provided by the company's survival and development from the company's internal and external environment, and sum up the core competitiveness that is different from our competitors and accepted by the market and can bring continuous value-added to the company. On this basis, the financial strategy suitable for the strategic needs is formulated, so as to allocate the company's resources more reasonably, promote the realization of the company's overall strategy and maximize the company's value.

2, strategic choice ability

All roads lead to Rome. After the company's strategy is determined, there may be many ways to realize it. How to choose the most suitable scheme among various schemes is often a thorny problem before the chief financial officer. The company's chief financial officer should have good strategic choice ability, and should use his own professional knowledge and experience to choose a' strategic realization path' for the company with less resource consumption, low risk and easy operation and control.

3. Strategic control ability

After the strategy is determined and the implementation plan is selected, how to better implement the selected plan becomes the key. The chief financial officer should be able to adjust the organizational structure according to the strategic requirements, straighten out the corresponding command relationship, establish various management systems suitable for the implementation of the strategy, rationally use and control various strategic resources, coordinate and handle conflicts and contradictions caused by various activities during the implementation of the strategy, maximize the efficiency of the company's resources, and ensure the full realization of the company's strategy.

With the development of social science and technology, the competition between companies is becoming more and more complicated, and the requirements of companies for CFO are getting higher and higher. Colleagues who are interested in CFO work should study hard, be brave in practice and strive to improve their responsibilities to adapt to this rapidly developing society.

In the modern sense, the chief financial officer is one of the makers and executors of the company's important strategic decisions, and is an indispensable role interspersed between financial markets and value management. With the deepening of global economic integration, traditional financial management knowledge can no longer meet the needs of modern enterprises. Today's financial managers and enterprise managers should not only follow some traditional principles, but also understand the ever-changing capital market and the development trend of financial management, and master the latest strategies and technologies in order to complete their work efficiently and provide strong interests protection and support for enterprise owners and shareholders!

Fourth, professional ethics requirements

As far as the human resources of any company are concerned, professional ethics is the first factor to consider in selecting and employing people. Especially for the company's chief financial officer, the requirement for professional ethics is higher than the general position. He not only participates in the supervision of the company's finance on behalf of the company's shareholders, but also cooperates with the company's manager to participate in the company's financial management and master the important business secrets in the company's strategic decision-making and production and operation.

Although there is no uniform professional ethics standard for the company's chief financial officer in society, the professional ethics requirements for the general company's chief financial officer are as follows:

1. Have a high sense of responsibility for the company and society.

A lot of management work of the company is carried out around the company's finance. The quality of a company's financial management largely determines its management level and its survival and development. As the highest person in charge of the company's finance, the chief financial officer has an unshirkable responsibility for the perfection and efficient operation of the company's financial system. He should not only be able to lead the company's financial management team to carry out financial accounting and control, plan and predict the company's value, but also be able to find new value growth points for the company and assume due responsibilities for its survival and development. The company finance he is responsible for is not only an important part of the company's internal management, but also a window for the public to understand and evaluate the company. It not only bears the responsibility of maximizing the company's interests internally, but also bears the responsibility of improving the public's credibility in the company's financial situation externally.

Therefore, while considering the company's own interests, the chief financial officer must ensure that the company abides by industry standards and norms and that the company does not infringe on public interests. This requires the company's financial director to have a high personal quality, a high sense of responsibility and mission to the company and society, and not to infringe on the public interest for the benefit of the company's small group, nor to harm the company's interests for the sake of pleasing the public. Strictly keep the company's business secrets, and do not use the company secrets you have to seek illegitimate interests for yourself and others.

2. Adhere to an independent, objective and fair working attitude.

The chief financial officer of the company is appointed by the board of directors of the company, responsible for supervising the financial operation of the company and directly participating in the daily financial management of the company, which makes the chief financial officer in a dilemma in the organization and management of the company. In this predicament, the company's chief financial officer should adhere to an independent, objective and fair working attitude, be impartial in financial management activities, maintain an independent spirit and will, and investigate, judge and express opinions on related matters. Based on objective facts, not influenced by personal subjective wishes, personal likes and dislikes and opinions of superiors, treat statements and various stakeholders fairly, fairly and honestly, and abide by principles. Things that violate national systems and standards and harm the interests of companies, society, the public and relevant stakeholders should be pointed out and corrected in time, and they should not muddle along, let alone participate in covering up.

3. Have a strong sense of risk.

There are a lot of business risks and investment risks in the company's production and operation. Most of these risks are first reflected in the company's finances. The chief financial officer has two important responsibilities, one is to improve the efficiency of the company's asset operation, and the other is to prevent the occurrence of company risks. In the process of controlling the company's financial management, the chief financial officer should not only control the financial operation of business processes to improve the operating efficiency of the company's assets, but also control the company's financial risks to avoid the occurrence of company risks. A strong sense of risk is one of the necessary requirements of the company's financial director.

4. Have a rigorous work style.

The company's chief financial officer is called a high starting point and demanding profession. One of the main reasons is that his job is very complicated. Financial planning, forecasting and decision-making need a lot of objective historical data and development laws as the basis. An oversight may bring irreparable losses to the company. Every process of financial management should be based on sufficient and appropriate evidence. Without strict work style, it is difficult to obtain objective and true data, which may be beneficial to the company's business decision.

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