CFO Roles and Responsibilities

There are five main CFO roles or responsibilities that a functional manager should understand in order to develop a CFO mindset. These are maximizing shareholder value, which is the underlying goal of all CFOs, managing cash and working capital, risk management, ensuring compliance and financial reporting, and strategic planning and decision making.

CFO roles and responsibilities.
Role	Aspects of this role
Maximizing shareholder value	Maximizing shareholder value involves managing and controlling costs and budgets, evaluating and approving purchases, increasing operational efficiency, and allocating funds to build capacity. This is the underlying and most important CFO responsibility.
Managing cash and working capital	Effectively managing cash and working capital involves careful and meticulous forecasting of cash requirements. These forecasts must be checked against actual results to monitor and improve the accuracy of the forecasting.
Risk management	Effective risk management involves identifying and measuring risks, deciding whether to retain or transfer risks, and mitigating risks.
Ensuring compliance and financial reporting	Ensuring compliance and financial reporting involves tax and regulatory compliance, adherence to accounting standards, and communication and reporting to stakeholders.
Strategic planning and decision making	Strategic planning and decision making involves resource allocation and budgetary planning, decisions about capital investments, and decisions on strategic investments.