Professionally qualified accountants have a positive reputation for integrity, logical thought and financial aptitude. These attributes engender the confidence of others, be they board members, shareholders or regulators.
This reputation has, in recent years, often led boards and senior management to look to the finance director and the finance function to provide them with more guidance and information on an increasing number of topics, as well as the more traditional, but ever more complex, financial reporting requirements. Will this trend continue?
Information is the lifeblood needed to manage any organisation. In the future, boards and senior management are likely to require more succinct information, produced at a faster rate, with the ability for them to access more detailed information as needed. Another essential requirement is that the information is fit for purpose and produced by processes and systems that are robust.
Whilst this may be assured for financial processes and information, future requirements for internal and external use are increasingly being driven towards information of a non-financial nature. Will it be to the skills of a finance function, to another in-house department or to an outsourced provider that a board will turn to provide them with this information?
The contrasting pressures of regulatory requirements and of risk management on the one hand and cost savings and effective and informed business operations on the other, make the board's need to retain control of complex businesses a difficult task.
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