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Use The Kiss Principle to Improve Accounting and Finance Processes

August 3, 2022 By CMA Solutions

By Allan Tepper, 7/29/22

The clock on the CFO’s desk strikes 3:00 AM. This CFO has consumed her eighth Red Bull of the night, with another pack of the drinks in her refrigerator. Working until the sun peeks through the blinds of her office, the CFO finishes her preparations for the board meeting the next day. “I prepared for the meeting all by myself,” the CFO thinks to herself. And she further thinks, “the board will absolutely love my presentation.” When the CFO finishes her presentation to the board, each member remains silent. Blank stares. No questions.

This CFO was destined to fail. She did not develop a closing process to produce timely and accurate information, forcing her to do all the work herself at the last minute, and with no time for analysis and error checking.

As a co-founder of a CFO and controllership consulting firm, I have witnessed many hard-working CFOs fail in their duties. For example, some flopped because their accounting and finance functions were ineffective in producing timely and accurate results. Others were hurt, not because the accounting function didn’t produce timely financial results, but because of other poor accounting and finance processes. Either way, time was their enemy.

So, what simple adjustments should CFOs consider in order to improve their accounting and finance processes:

  1. Fully utilize your accounting system. Many people only use the bare minimums of its capabilities, instead falling back on Excel for many reports and calculations. Although this is not a truism, I like to think that each excel spreadsheet adds one extra day of work to your closing schedule.
  2. Make sure that you put the right people in the right chairs, and then train the team. Better yet, cross-train your team so functions can continue during periods of vacation, illness or termination.
  3. Eliminate Excel to the greatest extent possible for accounting-oriented work. If necessary, build automated processes in languages where formulas and references cannot be easily deleted/changed.
  4. Frequently take time to analyze the work processes and determine ways in which you can improve it. I like sitting down in a coffee shop with a white sheet of paper and no phone. Just let the juices flow. You will be amazed at the things you will develop.
  5. Develop or cause your controller to develop a detailed closing schedule that will be fully reviewed with all members of the team.
  6. Build in time to analyze the numbers. Do not go into meetings with “warm paper” (hot off the copier machine).

Had the aforementioned CFO performed the above six steps, the feedback would have been thumbs up, and not blank stares.

Filed Under: Allan Tepper, Resources

Exit Strategy: How SaaS Founders Cash Out

June 23, 2022 By CMA Solutions

(This story originally appeared in CFO.com.)

By Tom Aiken

While more companies transact and store their business off premises, SaaS companies have seen a run up in their valuations.

Since 2015, the SaaS market continues to grow—18% annually—while 99% of organizations are using at least one cloud solution to drive demand.

From an investor perspective, SaaS companies provide a dependable revenue stream like real estate rentals along with high growth.

This might be the right time for SaaS founders to exit.

It’s about accumulating the right information so investment bankers and/or buyers can draw a conclusion. You have to make sure the information is accurate and available.

Here are five factors SaaS founders should consider if they want to cash out:

1. First Impressions Matter

Financial records provide a glimpse into the operations of SaaS companies. Having your company’s financial house in order makes a terrific first impression for any potential suitor. Presenting numbers with missing or jumbled information will only lower expectations for your company.

For investors, today is about tomorrow. They want to quickly determine the present value of cash flow so they can project the company’s future value. To arrive at that number, investors will look at value drivers such as the growth of the business, scale of revenue, the market size, revenue retention, gross margins and product mix for starters. Customer acquisition and churn rate also will be part of the initial conversation.

SaaS companies will need three years of financial records based on an accrual basis—not cash—and a strategic plan covering three to five years.

2. Repeat Business—Again

A SaaS company valuation is annualized revenue times a multiplier.

The multiplier for valuation is typically annual recurring revenue (ARR). ARR is normalized on an annual basis revenue that a company expects to receive from its customers for providing them with products or services. ARR is a metric for quantifying a company’s growth, evaluating its subscription model and forecasting its revenue. Most early-stage SaaS companies are not profitable, and the value is in the recurring revenue contracts.

While other businesses would look at profits, that’s not the case for SaaS companies. It’s important to focus on customer retention, agreement and contracts that provide recurring revenue. One-offs, such as selling licenses, aren’t as meaningful.

Double-digit ARR valuations for growth-stage companies are more common than they were before 2020, but they are still reserved for only the best performers. The division line looks to be around 50% annual growth. For companies with more than $1 million in ARR, the bottom 75% of companies are growing at less than 55% per year, while the top quartile is growing at least 55% year-over-year, according to SaaS Capital’s annual survey of private, B2B SaaS companies.

The median growth rate for all companies with at least $1 million in ARR is 28%. Median private valuations have pulled up also, albeit more modestly, from around 4x pre-2020 to around 6x ARR today.

Unlike other businesses, SaaS companies are driven by revenue and revenue, which eventually turn into cash. That’s where the value comes in. It’s in retained revenue. Repeat business becomes the value of these businesses.

Recognizing revenue, however, becomes the tricky part. 

Revenue recognition is simple in a typical commercial setting. A buyer and seller exchange something of value at the same time and the transaction is complete.

But there is a different rule for SaaS revenue, which mainly comes from ongoing subscriptions. Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606 is the relatively new revenue recognition standard that impacts businesses that enter into contracts with customers for transfer of goods and services.

Once a company begins to scale, the accounting task can become more challenging if done manually or using older systems.

Using ASC 606, a portion of the annual subscription fee is treated as earned income and deferred revenue through the course of the contract. For instance, revenue must be recorded in the period when the product or service was delivered (i.e. “earned”), whether or not cash was collected from the customer.

If you don’t account for it the right way, it could result in a restatement of the financials, which would create delays and added expenses. That’s a problem if you are trying to sell a business.

The more streamlined your contracts are from customer to customer, the easier it is. Smaller SaaS companies will do anything to get the business so they will fold other things into the contracts like professional services and discounts based on number of seats. It becomes important to review each contract and establish the correct accounting for that contract.

3. Safety in Numbers

When it comes to product mix, there is safety in numbers.

For SaaS companies, there’s a phenomenon called the growth ceiling, which is the highest number of customers you can retain based on the current offering of your business. In other words, new customers, in effect, are being cancelled out by existing customers who are leaving. And that leaves the company with a zero-growth rate.

Improving your churn rate, which captures departing customers, is one way to raise the ceiling. A good SaaS churn-rate benchmark falls between 5%-7% for annual churn and under 1% for monthly churn. So far this year, companies are trending toward adding tutorials about product features, onboarding videos and additional high-value content intended to reduce churn and create an opportunity for new revenue streams.

SaaS companies must be able to isolate each revenue stream to properly value the service in the present and the future.

Public company reporting doesn’t break out profitability by individual products, merely revenue, subscription revenue, professional services, etc. It’s important to have each product broken down. The business must be able to do revenue projections for each revenue stream. In part, that’s what you are paying for in an investment banker. It is very difficult to obtain private company comparative data and the investment bankers are better able to obtain the data.

4. Know Your Competition

From the start, SaaS companies should build the value of their future valuation.

Even your direct competitors, also known as comparables, can help. Start with a benchmark.

The average SaaS company has a multiple of 6.5, a $65 million valuation and a 74% gross margin. Those are places you can start to look at for areas of improvement. Public companies were as high as 16.9x ARR by the end of the 2020. Since peaking at that all-time high in December, these companies have traded in a fairly narrow range of 14.5x to 16.3x ARR. Median private valuations are more modest, ranging from 4x pre-2020 to around 6x-6.5x today.

Although SaaS companies may have a lower 60% gross margin, a deep financial analysis would determine how they account for things relative to sustaining products or research and development for new products to make the P&L statements more accurate. Often, private companies don’t recognize R&D properly, so the financials can be misleading, especially involving product enhancements.

Knowing your own numbers is also mission critical. What is the cost of customer acquisition? Does it cost 75 cents for every dollar in revenue? How much annual revenue is generated from each dollar spent on sales and marketing?

Investors will look at it.

Early in the business cycle, SaaS companies don’t spend much time worrying about profitability because ramping up customer acquisition is a costly endeavor. In fact, on a customer basis, these companies might lose money in the short term. But once the recurring revenue kicks in, there are higher operating margins because the sales and marketing expense has gone away.

The notion of profitability, however, does become relevant in a valuation process when growth slows.

Future cash flow from a business that is both unprofitable and slow growing is not the best situation. Being acquired becomes extremely difficult unless the acquiring company can find synergies when combining the companies.

5. Manage Up

For many SaaS companies, finding an experienced CEO could play a large role in their exit strategy.

With early-stage SaaS companies, often the CEO is the inventor or scientist, the person who hatched an idea that became the business. In many instances, however, they don’t have management experience. They don’t know how to put together a good team and they are not confident about the financial dynamics surrounding business operations.

Numbers and key performance indicators aside, there are noteworthy X-factors to consider from a future investor’s perspective.

How strong is your management team? That’s probably more important than anything else. Nobody wants to invest in a management team that can’t make it happen.

That’s not always an easy question to answer.

In general, only 10% of people have a natural talent to manage others, while 20% have some leadership talent but need training. To acerbate the challenge, most companies (80%) are suffering from a talent shortage, making it difficult to onboard candidates in senior leadership positions.

Research shows that leaders succeed when they focus on a team’s strengths, driving up profits 14% to 29%, as well as 5% to 7% increases in customer engagement and 9% to 15% increases in employee engagement.

Past performance provides insight about the future.

You have to look for prior successes. You want someone with experience buying, selling and growing businesses. You can find ‘repetitive’ CEOs who have done it before, which gives investors confidence that they can do it again.

CFO Consulting Partners is comprised of a team of senior financial executives. We provide a broad range of financial management services to public and private companies. We work for CEOs, CFOs, as well as audit committees and boards. Our mission is to apply our consultants’ considerable collective experience to resolve client issues in a professional and efficient manner.

Tom Aiken of CFO Consulting Partners is a director in the firm’s software technology practice. He also has experience in electronics manufacturing, nonprofit, medical devices, cleantech, advanced materials, heavy manufacturing, social media and telecommunications.

Filed Under: Resources

A Changing Legacy: How Banks, Fintechs Partner

June 17, 2022 By CMA Solutions

(This story originally appeared in New Jersey Business Magazine.)

By Rob Milrod

Traditional banks must actively plan for change as the digital divide grows.

The marketplace has evolved, and traditional, legacy-driven banks need to follow suit by upgrading technology through partnerships.

One in 10 banks are in the process of developing a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) strategy and another 20% are considering one. Why? Embedded finance, which is essentially interconnected, integrated, automated, online banking services, is projected to generate $230 billion in revenue in 2025, which is a 10x increase since 2020.  Banks who can ‘rent’ their charter to a fintech to enable embedded finance apps will add a substantial new source of revenue. 

As a result, banks are spending more dollars and effort on application programming interfaces (APIs), which drive BaaS. In fact, the percentage of banks and credit unions that have invested in APIs will increase 25% this year. The number had already increased 47% from 2019 to 2021.

And banks are partnering with Fintech’s to improve their own infrastructure and better compete. Banks that can compete with a digital forward approach will also lose fewer customers to fintechs, as the environment impacting retentions continue to change. Last year, one of President Biden’s executive orders encouraged one of the nation’s financial guardians, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to prioritize Dodd-Frank regulations that would make it easier for consumers to access their data and transfer it to other banks and fintechs. In 2021, banks invested $80 billion in technology while fintechs raised $140 billion to disrupt the industry, according to the Financial Times.

CFO Consulting Partners has recently spoken at several industry events, including the Financial Managers Society of Philadelphia and Northern New Jersey Community Bankers, about the merge between banks and fintechs. 

Here is how this new relationship can work in both directions:

Banking On Hi-Tech

The ongoing partnership between fintechs and banks will be a marriage of necessity for most financial institutions—now that the trend has begun.

For traditional banks, partnering with fintechs could result in a temporary cost disadvantage due to the cost of replacing internal technology, such as core operating systems. Investing in new technology can be substantial, according to Cornerstone research. Banks pursuing BaaS increased non-interest expenses above the industry median of 18%, as part of the short-term investment. 

However, the shift toward integrated banking can create new opportunities for revenue. During the last five years, BaaS-partnered banks grew non-interest income by 67%, compared to the industry median of 31%. Banks can realize $25 billion in BaaS revenue in the next five years through relationships with fintechs. Banks can also, while they’re at it, benefit from applying the new technology to many internal banking functions, including onboarding customers, ID verification, as well as payment applications and financial applications that aggregate data across institutions to provide finance management guidance.

Banks that ‘‘rent’’ their charter to fintechs can grow their customer bases and balances at a rate much higher than normal expectations. BaaS banks are able to better leverage their operating systems and infrastructure, which allows them to process fee-generating transactions at higher volumes for more revenue.

Evolving Cultures

Fintechs can’t win the game if they’re not playing. And gaining entre to financial services isn’t quick and easy. Regulators don’t often approve new banking licenses, so fintechs will need to piggyback on an existing bank’s charter to access the financial system so their neo-bank products can function.

In many cases, however, fintechs will be looking at banks not only to enable their BaaS, but also as a source of investment.

But if tech companies really want to cross the moat, they will have to make accommodations. First, the Fintech team might have to dress up a little bit to get with the program. Jeans and t-shirts don’t fit in a community bank culture.

Fintechs should also be prepared to answer a lot of questions in the process, since banks will need to handle compliance requirements and volumes could grow at a much faster rate than banks are used to seeing.

If you are going to provide technology to a bank, you should expect to deliver a lot of integration support. Be prepared to help the bank make the investment case to drive a go-decision. And consider having an implementation team available to problem solve on the spot for quick and effective outcomes.

Banks also need to weigh the cost of fitting in with or getting out of the usually long-term contract with their core operating system provider. Banks must prepare their IT team to integrate any selected fintech apps, assuming it will take longer than expected. And finance and operations teams should be prepared for any impact on close and reconciliation activities, as well as transaction flows.

Banks should be prepared for customer and balance growth that might exceed historical trends by quite a bit, which would impact the financial forecasting process, a high-class problem.

Remaining Relevant Amid Uncertainty

While the new world of banking is being built, there are a few trends that should not be overlooked. Relevance and survival are always paramount during times of change.

Early-adopter banks have made it clear that serving particular customer segments will be crucial. Once conservative banks are now implementing crypto savings, payments, and lending. 

All the while, staple consumer banking strategies such as high-rate credit cards, overdraft fees, and accounts that pay near-nothing in interest will be targeted for disruption. 

Banks must start planning today to keep pace. While banks are being heavily disrupted on the consumer side, they are less so on the commercial side—so far.

Fast-moving, automated processes and easy access to digital applications and customer service are table stakes. Consider applying technology to key components of the process that are pain points for customers, such as loan origination.

CFO Consulting Partners is comprised of a team of senior financial executives. We provide a broad range of financial management services to public and private companies. We work for CEOs, CFOs, as well as audit committees and boards. Our mission is to apply our consultants’ considerable collective experience to resolve client issues in a professional and efficient manner.

Blog Contributor:

Rob Milrod of CFO Consulting Partners is a senior finance leader with more than 25 years of experience, including audit experience at a Big 4 public accounting firm. Recently, he has provided firsthand fractional CFO support to build financial infrastructure and operating discipline at e-commerce, fintech, nonprofits and private equity portfolio companies.

Filed Under: Resources, Rob Milrod

Working Capital? Manufacturers Need to Work Their Plan

May 27, 2022 By CMA Solutions

Manufacturers are being squeezed.

The cost of raw materials and labor are rising, inflation is climbing.

Is your operations team sharing the right data with management to keep pace with the tide? How is your working capital?

According to a Crowe Horwath LLP study, 82% of U.S. manufacturing and distribution companies believe optimizing working capital is “extremely important” or “very important” to their company’s success. But only 46% say they had implemented a working capital plan. Another 7% of respondents say they have no intention of creating a plan to improve their operating cash flow.

You are not alone. Many manufacturers find themselves in a challenging situation.

That’s why New Jersey Business Magazine asked us for our expertise. So did the Exit Strategy Exchange. 

Providing vital insight, expertise and intelligence is how we help companies across various different verticals, including manufacturing. CFO Consulting Partners is comprised of a team of senior financial executives. We provide a broad range of financial management services to public and private companies. We work for CEOs, CFOs, as well as audit committees and boards. Our mission is to apply our consultants’ considerable collective experience to resolve client issues in a professional and efficient manner.

Our growing team includes former CFOs, controllers and auditors who understand where you are in the business cycle because they used to sit in a similar seat.

When members of the media asked us to help manufacturers, we asked team members Gary Cardamone and Jeffrey Appleman to share their insight. Gary has more than 30 years of experience in the private sector in manufacturing and engineering services. Jeffrey has more than 30 years of experience in public accounting and the private sector with expertise in restructuring and M&A.

Whether you are looking for expertise on how to find better cash flow and margins or how to be better prepared to maximize your company’s value, we are ready to help.

Filed Under: Newsletters

7 Ways Manufacturers Find Better Cash Flow, Margins

May 5, 2022 By CMA Solutions

(This story originally appeared in New Jersey Business Magazine.)

By David P. DeMuth

Manufacturers understand the critical importance of cash flows and margins.

Yet, the majority of business owners don’t do enough to protect working capital, which is the combination of accounts receivable, accounts payable and inventory.

According to a Crowe Horwath LLP study, 82% of U.S. manufacturing and distribution companies believe optimizing working capital is “extremely important” or “very important” to their company’s success. But only 46% say they had implemented a working capital plan. Another 7% of respondents say they have no intention of creating a plan to improve their operating cash flow.

“In practice, it can be difficult to manage working capital,” said CFO Consulting Partners Gary Cardamone, a director in the firm’s Manufacturing and Distribution practice. “Business owners and their staffs have long standing relationships with customers and suppliers. It’s a lack of experience, rigor and discipline while balancing key business relationships.”

For example, if a customer has 45-day payment terms, yet they don’t pay for 60 days, a manufacturer could potentially accept the past due payments because they’ve been a customer for 10 years. Why? Because it’s the way it has been done for a long time (i.e. the relationship). It often works the same way with vendors. Manufacturers have the right to negotiate payment beyond 45 days, but too many times they won’t because they’ve been supplying the business for years.

“You’re not going to disrupt that relationship,” said Cardamone who has helped countless manufacturers improve their financials. “Sometimes, business owners don’t want to affect those relationships. There is the relationship side and the business side. Sometimes, it’s about making sound business decisions to improve cash flows while working together with your customer or vendor.”

Here are six more ways manufacturers can find improve operating cash flow and net income:

  1. Use 80/20 Rule on Inventory.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is a time-tested observation that contains a general truth—80% of outputs come from 20% of inputs.

When applied to inventory, this notion can generate more positive cash flows and higher margins. How? After reviewing the numbers, business owners will learn that 80% of their turnover comes from 20% of the SKUs. In other words, 80% of the remaining SKUs could be tying up capital for an inordinate amount of time. Let’s face it: time is money.

CFO Consulting Partners’ Jeffrey Appleman, who is a director in the firm’s Manufacturing, Distribution and Business Services practice, said manufacturers need to invest their inventory dollars in the data, not anecdotal feedback from a limited number of customers.

“Manufacturers need to rationalize their SKUs,” Appleman said. “Regarding their inventory, management probably never focuses on the financial data. Business owners listen to the customers, but sales don’t follow. Meanwhile, the company is too heavily loaded with SKUs that turn infrequently. They keep large volumes of inventory to meet customer needs, but they are not rooted in reality. As a result, they have tied up a lot of cash.”

  1. Project Positive Cash Flows.

Manufacturers should build financial models to ensure that their business won’t go upside down during sweeping changes in the economy.

With supply chain issues and rapid inflation that could cause short-term concerns about rising wages, manufacturers must price in front of the cost curve to improve their margins. If a financial analysis reveals a strong possibility that raw materials are projected to rise 5% and wages may jump 4%, then manufacturers may have to implement a 6% price increase to protect or improve margins.

“I’m not talking like a banker,” Cardamone said, “I’m talking like a manufacturer. Raw materials and labor are their direct variable costs. They need to price out in front of inflation on costs to protect their profitability. Margins speak directly to cash flow.”

  1. Be Firm About Terms.

There is a very important reason why manufacturers create terms for their customers. A process is what separates a profitable factory from the rest. Terms are a big part of the process, which can feel more like a house of cards when the terms are ignored.

In other words, if customers have 45 days to pay, then that needs to be enforced. Seriously.

“Most companies don’t have enough discipline in the accounts receivable area,” Appleman said. “They let customers go over the agreed upon terms. It will take rigor and discipline. This will increase cash flow. If a customer is given 45 days to pay and they take 90 days, that’s a big difference.”

On a separate but related note, manufacturers must make sure they accounts payable terms match their accounts receivable terms. Otherwise, it will create a serious mismatch and negative cash flow.

“It’s why companies run out of money,” he added. “If you are paying our vendors in 45 days and your customers are paying you in 90 days, that’s generally a problem.”

  1. Monetize Fixed Costs.

You already have fixed costs, such as a depreciation, taxes, maintenance, salaries and benefits in addition to a CEO, a CFO and a VP of Operations and other SG&A costs.

When demand starts to rise, manufacturers should be quick to generate a bigger return from their costs. Today, you run one shift, but why not add another shift for a much smaller investment since plenty of infrastructure and staff is in place?

CFOs could run the numbers and sell the idea to their CEO. They can show them what profitability might look like in 12 to 18 months. The projected numbers can even tell manufacturers when to add a third shift.

“Demonstrate how certain costs are variable and move with volume and some are fixed and don’t move,” Cardamone said. “With business owners, we explain which costs land in either of the two buckets. A CEOs salary doesn’t go up because you produce more widgets, but the parts for the widgets (variable costs) will increase with volume.”

  1. Protect Borrowing Capabilities.

When manufacturers rely on an asset-based line of credit, they must make sure their lender’s terms match their customers’ terms to support operating cash flow.

Most business use a line of credit to help with short-term cash flow demands. If the business doesn’t have enough cash assets to cover the loan, the lender may require other types of collateral, such as accounts receivable, which are more liquid than physical assets.

But there’s one important point.

“If you are borrowing based on your account receivables 90 days out and your customers are not paying within the timeframe, it will limit your borrowing capability,” said Appleman, who has held the role as chief financial officer for growing privately held companies. “That will disqualify customers from your borrowing base, and it will limit your borrowing capability. It’s a multi-faceted problem that a good CFO can quickly fix.”

  1. Leverage Data to Engage Your CEO.

Company cultures, which include manufacturers, do not value the decision-making capabilities that analytics can provide, according to a recent report in the Harvard Business Review. In addition, a Deloitte survey of U.S. executives found that the majority (63%) didn’t believe their companies were driven by analytics, while 67% said they were not comfortable using data from their resources.

Cardamone said education is the way companies must engage the CEOs to ensure they are part of the process. After all, it is the CEO who has the authority to bring the entire company together. Financial statements and financial records aren’t only about the Finance Department. It also includes team members in Credit and Operations to name a few.

The CFO could show the CEO the projected impact on operating cash flow if accounts receivable were moved from 45 days to 60 days or if inventory were reduced from 30 days to 15 days.

“Those are the kind of things to show a CEO in terms of margins and operating cash flow improvements,” Cardamone said. “It must be data-driven information that would make an impression on CEOs. The numbers could motivate them to make some changes.”

CFO Consulting Partners is comprised of a team of senior financial executives. We provide a broad range of financial management services to public and private companies. We work for CEOs, CFOs, as well as audit committees and boards. Our mission is to apply our consultants’ considerable collective experience to resolve client issues in a professional and efficient manner.

Blog Contributors:

Gary Cardamone of CFO Consulting Partners has over thirty years of experience in the private sector in manufacturing and engineering services. His expertise includes strategy and business development, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, turnarounds, business modeling and financial planning, as well as sales and operations analysis.

Jeffrey Appleman of CFO Consulting Partners has more than 30 years of experience in public accounting and the private sector. He has served small and medium sized, growing privately held companies. His expertise includes accounting operations, restructuring, financial reporting and mergers and acquisitions.

(David DeMuth, a co-founder of CFO Consulting Partners. He leads the firm’s Real Estate, Manufacturing and Healthcare industry practices and co-leads the firm’s Technology, Transaction/M&A and Private Equity practices.)

Filed Under: David Demuth, Resources

CFO Consulting Partners Talks FinTech-Bank Synergy

April 4, 2022 By CMA Solutions

Partner Eric Segal Shares Insight at Financial Managers Society

Eric Segal, a partner at CFO Consulting Partners, recently lead a panel discussion about how high-tech FinTech companies are finding ways to work with legacy-driven banks. Fellow panelists included Rob Milrod, FinTech lead at CFO Consulting Partners, Nancy Schneier, chief revenue officer and founder of Vikar Technologies and Markus Veith, who is Grant Thornton’s digital asset practice leader and partner in charge of the Northeast Financial Institutions Practice.

At the CFO Consulting Partners’ sponsored event, Segal explained the benefits and challenges that the two parties must address before they can grow their business. For most banks, partnering with FinTechs may be the fastest way to sidestep the legacy systems and grab Millennials’ market share.

The special event, “FinTech & Banks: How Does It All Work,” was held at the Financial Mangers Society (Philadelphia Chapter) in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. 

As head of the firm’s FinTech, Banking and Financial Institutions practice, Segal has worked as interim CFO for a $1 billion public community bank, providing clients with regulatory guidance, conducting M&A sell-side due diligence, managing SEC reporting such as 10-Q restatements, developing business plans and mortgaging bank accounting policies, as well as securitization analysis.

Rob Milrod, a senior finance leader at CFO Consulting Partners, also was part of the panel discussion. Milrod has more than 25 years of finance and accounting experience, including audit experience at a Big 4 public accounting firm, senior global roles in finance, investor relations and sales at Citigroup and consulting work with smaller companies and startups.

According to a 2021 financial services survey that focused on digital transformation, today’s marketplace expects an experience that happens online. Regarding current customer priorities, financial executives said the following features top the list: 1) cloud-based collaboration platform (72%), real-time intelligence for customer analytics, and 3) data-driven personalization (58%). 

CFO Consulting Partners believes education is a building block for opportunity, which is why we invest in pertinent topics at FMS. We are a financial advisory firm that helps CEOs, CFOs and boards grow ROI with unmatched expertise, actionable data, improved processes, and innovative solutions for startups in all stages, as well as middle-market companies.

Based on our 15 years of experience, we also believe in a team-based approach to solve your problems. That’s why we have so many financial professionals on staff with CFO and controller experience in various spaces that include banking, financial services, FinTech and crypto. 

At CFO Consulting Partners, we build better processes that empower you to make better financial decisions. If you have questions about the evolving relationships between FinTechs and financial institutions, please email Eric Segal or call him at (609) 309-9307 x702.

We can grow faster together.

Filed Under: Eric Segal, Newsletters

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