In this episode, Chief Financial Officer at Valley National Advisors, Elizabeth Wilson discusses how increasingly important it is for CFOs to be strategists and catalysts to help shape the overall strategy and direction of the business and infuse a financial, technological and data-driven mindset into the DNA of an organization.
In this episode, Chief Financial Officer at Valley National Advisors, Elizabeth Wilson discusses how increasingly important it is for CFOs to be strategists and catalysts to help shape the overall strategy and direction of the business and infuse a financial, technological and data-driven mindset into the DNA of an organization.
Welcome to Finance to Futurist, a Sidetrade podcast series on how innovation data and AI are disrupting order-to- cash.
Natalie Silverman:Hi, this is Natalie Silverman for Sidetrade. Welcome to Finance to Futurist. On today's episode, we have a good friend of mine who happens to also be a CFO in the financial services industry and understands how increasingly important it is for CFOs to be strategists and catalysts to help shape the overall strategy and direction of the business and infuse a financial, technological and data driven mindset into the DNA of an organization. Please welcome Chief Financial Officer at Valley National Advisors, Elizabeth Wilson. Good morning, Elizabeth, and thanks for sitting down for Finance to Futurist.
Elizabeth Wilson:Thanks for having me, Natalie, I'm happy to be here.
Natalie Silverman:Well, I'm going to call you Liz only because I know you as Liz, and I'm sure the audience will get that we've known each other a very long time. I'm not going to say how many years but Elizabeth or Liz and I actually went to university together, we've gone in a little bit different path. Somehow I went the marketing side. But you know, Liz, you've always been on the finance and the accounting side. So super excited to talk to you today about the challenges you're facing today as a CFO in financial services.
Elizabeth Wilson:It sounds good. Let's get into it.
Natalie Silverman:All right, let's do it. So first question is really easy, don't worry, I'm gonna take it super easy on you. But maybe you can just let our audience know more about your background and how you got to be a CFO today.
Elizabeth Wilson:Sure. So as you mentioned, I always kind of had that a accounting and finance track, even from early days in university actually started out my career in what was at the time, the Big Four, it was right after the five had become the four. And I started out there, spent a couple of years there and then went into industry, I was a senior accountant. And then an internal auditor, which was truly a great opportunity gave me a chance to not only travel the world to grow my network and kind of see how people outside of these four walls of the United States operate. So spent a couple of years their internal audit. And then I actually made my way into corporate accounting and SEC reporting, working for publicly traded companies, I worked for a number of publicly traded companies in that SEC reporting function in different industries, went from technology industry to actually a manufacturer, and then actually to a PNC insurance type company. And those were all publicly traded. So spent a number of years there did a little pitstop at a startup that was a very interesting manufacturing retail hybrid in New York City. And then I found myself where I am now, which is at Valley National Financial Advisors, which is a asset management firm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I actually was hired about eight years ago, as the Corporate Controller, it was a newly created position at the time, never had anyone really above the bookkeeper level. And they were looking for someone with that had their CPA and had kind of that higher level financial analysis and reporting background. So started out as a Corporate Controller. Throughout the years, it's kind of worked my way up to the CFO role. And I'm, you know, taking many steps to get there, we also have a tax prep business. And so I'm running that I'm a member of our executive management team. So you know, I really get that finance, accounting, I get to see it from all levels, I get to see the nitty gritty of the daily transactional things all the way up to strategic and operational management.
Natalie Silverman:Well, I think you've come to the right place, because we're talking about how CFOs and how finance teams in general can move from some of those tactical activities, maybe that are on your plate that are burdensome to you to be more strategic. And that's something you know, we talk a lot about here at Sidetrade. I'd love to ask you off the top, what keeps you up at night as a CFO? And what are some of the top challenges you're facing today?
Elizabeth Wilson:As a CFO and in financial services...I mean, I think it's probably pretty obvious that what keeps me up at night is the market, what the Fed is doing with interest rates, inflation, you know, just overall the economic conditions, we are lucky to work with people who trust their their assets and their financial future, their retirement to us. And when we're talking about some of these, you know, harder economic times, not only am I worried about the business from, you know, our own operational standpoint, you know, making sure that we have cash reserves in place. And, you know, we're able to not only just pay our employees, but continue to provide the benefits that we provide and training and education and development. But on the other side of it, what does it mean for our clients and their financial security when the markets are, you know, as volatile as they are right now, from an industry perspective, I'd say that's definitely something that worries me on an everyday basis and just challenges of being a CFO. I don't think that this is specific to any one industry, probably pretty similar across the board. We are tasked with making sure we have a financially healthy organization. And if we don't, how do we get there? And not only that, how do we communicate or tell a story about the financial aspect of our business. And and what does that mean? And I mean, that's definitely a challenge every day something changes. And so it's you know, having to kind of rewrite that story or, or reframe that story. So that our stakeholders, you know, which can be our clients, our employees, if you're a publicly traded company, it's your shareholders. In our case, we're not publicly traded. So you know, it's the owner of the business. So how do we communicate and make sure that what we're doing is relevant, and we're making the right decisions both operationally strategically for our own organization and for our clients.
Natalie Silverman:So there's only a couple of things that keep you up at night, then it sounds like right, not too much.
Elizabeth Wilson:Not too much. I mean, those are, those are big things. And there's a lot of different aspects to them. So I wouldn't say there's a great number of things, but the gravity of those things is pretty significant.
Natalie Silverman:I was going to say, I can't even imagine how you get any sleep, just even hearing a few of those things.
Elizabeth Wilson:The hard too a lot of it is out of our control, it's not in my day to day control what the market is going to do, it's not up to me what the Fed is going to do. So kind of at the mercy of other people as well, which, you know, that adds another layer to that, for that complexity.
Natalie Silverman:You know, it's funny, we just attended a recent event by an industry analysts, and one of the top challenges that they even recognized is what you just mentioned, uncertainty. And sometimes it's those market drivers that again, you have zero control over that are really, you know, some of the challenges that you have to navigate. Right. So, again, you're not alone. But that brings me to a good point of tell me a little bit about the role of the CFO, because when you were in school, and we were both back in school, you took a lot of classes, I think that were more maybe accounting focused, or, you know, different aspects of finance. And we've seen over the past few years, even with more automation technology data, the CFO role seems to have evolved. So I guess what does that look like from your perspective?
Elizabeth Wilson:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely evolved. It's when I know when I started out X number of years ago, I kind of always had it in my mind that one day, I wanted to be a CFO, and kind of what that looked like, when I started out and what it looks like now day to day, it's very different. Whereas you're right, it was a lot of, you know, used to be more, I would say accounting, focused and historical reporting, right, you know, what were our results last month? What were our results? Last quarter, I've seen it over the course of my career. And even in the last, you know, three, four years where I've had this title of CFO, I've seen a huge shift, you know, the pandemic was a big driver of this, it's gone from very transactional and historical reporting to the future. And, you know, what does that mean? And what does it look like forecasting is huge. I mean, budgeting is always, I think, kind of been a role. But I would say budgeting and forecasts have always played a role for the CFO. But now the importance is just, it's grown significantly, because it's no longer just about, oh, let's you know, try to put together a good forecast. It's, you know, there's some organizations that may live or die by that forecast, especially in the economic situation that we find ourselves in. So I've definitely seen the shift there from you know, transactional and historical reporting to being a future thinker. And I'm not just saying future like next quarter, I'm saying future 3, 5, 10 years down the road. And what goes along with that is, I think the development of the CFO, as a strategic leader in the organization. I believe a CFO was probably always very heavily relied upon, for their opinion, just because of, you know, your financial acumen. And but now it's more so you know, that that strategic thinking and leadership role, it's a requirement for the position, you have a lot of people that are relying on you. And you have to kind of open up your mind to think outside of the box more so than I believe was the case, maybe 10, 20, 30 years ago. Part of that is developing soft skills. And soft skills isn't always the best word for these types of skills, because I find personally, some of them are the hardest ones to develop. So it's kind of funny that we call them soft skills, when they're probably harder sometimes in some of these technical skills that we have, it's always important to stay up on our technical knowledge. And that's never going to change. But being the strategic thinker and this strategic leader, it calls upon the CFO to develop skills that, you know, we're certainly not necessarily born with or if we are born with them, they they require development. And I'd say the biggest one is emotional intelligence. And I've seen that play a huge role in not only me personally in my professional journey, but just you know, as a network, and I go to conferences, and I talk to other CFOs and other finance leaders, you know, we're talking more and more about those soft skills and what that means in your day to day job, as opposed to oh, hey, did you see that latest, you know, FASB pronouncement? You know, we're talking more about those softer skills and being a leader and a strategic thinker and storytelling, that's it's another big piece of it. And along with that comes data, which I know that we're going to go there and we're going to talk a lot about data, but the role that that's playing as part of being a CFO has changed dramatically.
Natalie Silverman:Well, I can attest that you have some of the highest EQ I've ever seen. So I know that you must be very successful in your role, because I do know you've been an active listener since I've known you day one. So kudos on that.
Elizabeth Wilson:Thank you. That's a compliment. Thank you.
Natalie Silverman:Of course, no, but I mean, again, you're right. Those are some of the skills that you don't necessarily learn in a classroom. Right? That's things that you really have to work hard at, and, you know, again, just evolving in your career and as a, you know, a leader, that some of the things that you learn along the way, so, but yeah, again, you are, you're hitting the nail on the head here, because you know, our podcast is financed a futurist. And so we feel very strongly that you're right, the CFO is no longer just this transactional, tactical, financially focused role, right? It really has evolved. And one of the things you mentioned was data. So let me kind of move there and just ask you, how does data and how does technology? How do they both fit into your strategic vision? And also, how do you leverage data and technology to enable your team?
Elizabeth Wilson:You know, the firm that I work for, we're, I would say a midsize firm. And there is so much data available to us. And we're just kind of starting to dip our toes into how do we gather that data? How do we analyze that data? And then how do we report out on that data, and if we aren't going to report out on it, who cares? And why? Because that that definitely makes a difference when you're telling the story. You know, if I'm presenting to the Board of Directors, that's much different than presenting data to our financial advisors, which is very different than presenting data to our back office operations team. So I mean, I think data is extremely important. And it's definitely a huge part of our future strategic vision, more so than it has ever been. And that's part of the evolution of not only the firm itself, but just the world that we find ourselves in, I would say that we've been more kind of technologically advanced type of firm, when it comes to, you know, what we can offer our clients and the information that's available to us from third parties. But it's definitely time for us to consider the information that we have, you know, in house, and what can we do with that. And I know that that's something that I'm pushing for big time for us to leverage going forward and say, you know, for us to be the strategic thinkers and the strategic leaders, let's look at this data that we have available to us, and let that help us drive some of these decisions that we're making. Now, not to say that data is always going to give you the answer you want, because it's definitely not sometimes going to give you the answer, your one's gonna give you an answer. And then you have to decide if that's the answer that you want to act upon or not. But it's available to us, there's many different ways to get it. Even if you don't have the skills in house, you know, can you look outside of your own four walls in order to utilize that data and let it help you make decisions? And like I had said before, who are you presenting that data to? What format does it have to take? What does it look like? You know, is it is it a bunch of PowerPoint slides? Is it an Excel printout with regression analysis, it depends on your audience there. But if we don't leverage it, and not only I'm not talking just about my firm, I'm talking about CFOs in general, and the finance function, if we don't leverage it, and we don't make it part of our daily routine, you know, we're gonna find ourselves kind of obsolete. And I think it's very important to to stay ahead of these type of things. You know, when they start, things start to become buzzwords, artificial intelligence, just any subset of the word you can put on data, right? Like you had said in previous podcast, you're talking about the data lake and all these different things, data sets, data analysis, data analytics, when those start to become buzzwords, in my opinion, in order to be relevant, not only for yourself, but for your organization, you have to dig into those things and find out what what it is that they mean, and how you can leverage it for your own organization, and see where it's gonna fit. And what can you do with it.
Natalie Silverman:I always knew you were one of my best friends. You know why? Because you listen to my podcast, and you actually knew and took away some cool insights there. So thank you, I appreciate that. But you're right. Big data, right? I mean, big data was the buzzword, what, 10 years ago, and now it's data lake what's next data ocean, but Right, right, you do have to you have to understand and put this in the context of well, how can I leverage this? How can I be more predictive? How can I benchmark forecast, you know, use this to your advantage? Right. So but here, here's a controversial statement that I've asked a couple of my colleagues but wanted to ask you being a CFO, is digital transformation. Is that just a buzzword? Or is that something you're actually thinking about today?
Elizabeth Wilson:I don't think it's just a buzzword. I think it's something I wouldn't say it's one of the things that keeps me up at night, because I'm not to that point with it yet. But it is something that my personal opinion, I'm thinking about constantly. And I'm thinking about it because the world is changing. And the way that we get our information, and you know, where it comes from and how we report out on it and how we use it is constantly changing. And like I had said before, if you don't keep up with that transformation, you're not doing yourself any good. You're doing your clients a disservice. So it's definitely something I think about
Natalie Silverman:I love that, that makes perfect sense. And you're right, I think you're you have always have to take it in terms of context. And you know, digital transformation means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It could be regularly and but I think what's important to remember here is like, back in the day, we used AOL in college. And now you know, obviously, we're well beyond that, right or dial up modems, right? For for those that might even remember those. So, you know, that could just be the analog to digital, you know, that digital transformation is going to mean different things sense of digital transformation, or like you said, it could be Hey, using AI and machine learning and some of those other tools in your order-to-cash process.
Elizabeth Wilson:So I'm glad that you brought up AI and in for different people, it's going to mean different things for machine learning, because I think that may be sometimes why people kind of shy away from that digital transformation, because there could be a negative connotation with it, different industries and different organizations, there where people hear digital transformation. And what they're thinking is replacement of people. Oh, okay, well, I don't need an accountant to sit in that seat because I can have the are some industries and some organizations that are going to computer do it. Now, I personally in my organization, in my specific role, we're not at that point. And I am not saying that digital transformation is about replacing people, what I think digital transformation can help jump on digital transformation much quicker than others. I know us with is to have those people be working on different types of things where they can get out of the nitty gritty of the daily transactions. And they can think beyond that, because whereas a from just the financial services industry in general, things are computer has the ability to compute data, and just the amount of data they can have that a computer can handle is is much greater than a human brain. But as humans, we have emotion, starting to change. When you're talking about robo advisors, we have reasoning. And as far as I know, that's not something that they've made the computers able to do at this point, you know, I've read and heard some things that that's ultimately you're talking about, you know, service desks that maybe are the goal, and we'll see if and when we ever get there. But digital transformation is not necessarily about replacing people with machines, in my opinion, it's giving the automated, you're talking about your clients now have apps to machines the ability to do the things that a human can spend their time better elsewhere.
Natalie Silverman:You know, that is a perfect segue because we actually had a conference that we attended not too long take a look at their portfolios, not that these things are new, ago in Canada, and we had one of our clients there, and she talked about the same theme. And she said, You know what, I have a strategic AR and finance team, I want to let them be as but how quickly are they being adapted in your organization, strategic as possible. But I don't want them to become data entry clerks. And she wants to give employees the tools and the technology to do their jobs more effectively. So in a way, she you know, to be useful for you and your clients. And then how was saying that technology is actually an employee retention play. So you're right. It wasn't about taking jobs away or automating so that there's less people on her team. But like you said it was making her team more strategic doing what they do was the outside world grasping onto those I, you know, I did best. Right. So I but I love that because I really think that complements what we're hearing in the industry as well. So last question for you. And then I'll let you go. I guess, thinking work at a startup for a short amount of time. And the digital back to your days, when we were both at Muhlenberg College, and you were in finance, and if you could look back on yourself a couple years ago, and think about what would you tell the transformation in that in that short amount of time that I saw next generation CFO? Or I guess, what advice would you have for somebody coming up through university and wanting to be into finance?
Elizabeth Wilson:I think the biggest piece of advice that you was incredible. But a part of that was because of the can give someone is to be flexible. And that may not seem like advice, right? Because you're not saying oh, I think you should do this, but it would be to consider flexibility and organization. And because of the industry. I don't think it's a adaptability. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't set boundaries. But what it means is, you know, just be open, right? Be open to learning be open to hey, that's a new word buzzword. I think it's very relevant. But you have to keep for me. What does it mean? How can I use it in my organization, I think and I'll speak from my own personal experience, when you're kind of working your way up that corporate ladder, you're it in context, I guess, is what I'm trying to say it has to stay so laser focused on what it is once you get to the top of it. Maybe if you took a little bit of time to spend some some more time on each of those rungs and look around once you found yourself at the top, you may know things that have really in context of what it is that that you, your organization, and kind of grown you as a person, not only technical skills, but some of those soft skills that I mentioned before. So everyone coming up is there you know, you're gonna have to be your clients are capable of handling. technical. You know, you're gonna have to be tech savvy. You know, you're to have to have your thumb on digital transformation and data and what that all means. I mean, the CPA exam is actually changing the format of the CPA exam is changing to include more of a technological aspect. So that there's different paths to becoming a CPA or you know, an accountant. However, you know, whatever you want to do within that function, there's different paths than just your typical, I'm an accounting major type of person. So it's no, it's no wonder that the technical skills and what it is that you're going to need to know are reshaping. And in order for that, to reshape the CPA exam to reshape the education you're getting is going to have to reshape, so I don't think that's going to be a surprise to anyone. But I think what you can learn outside of the classroom, and how you can be flexible and adaptable, and look around, learn from people be willing to learn, you know, take your role as a leader and a teacher very seriously. And, you know, you had mentioned the word before, being an active listener, I've really started to focus on that more and more kind of the higher up and more into executive management than I've gotten. And being an active listener. You'd be amazed at how much you learn by listening. It would be around those type of things that I would give that advice to the next the next generation of CFOs.
Natalie Silverman:Thanks, Elizabeth, for your insights into the future of finance. For Sidetrade, this is Natalie Silverman.
Conclusion:This has been another episode of Finance to Futurist, a Sidetrade podcast series. Make sure you catch every episode by subscribing to our podcast on sidetrade.com or through your podcast platform of choice. Thanks so much for tuning in. This podcast is brought to you by Sidetrade, and is for general information purposes only. All rights reserved.