By Sylvain Thieullent, CEO of Horizon Software

It feels like the financial services are in a constant state of rapid evolution as regulators, leaders, active participants and vendors strive to move the industry forward. For the FinTech sector, this could be a golden age, with every challenge creating an opportunity. If the current trajectory continues, it’s a golden age that could last for some time, says Sylvain Thieullent, CEO of Horizon Software.

 The financial services thrive on change. Change drives innovation, and in turn, innovation finds faster, more efficient ways of doing things. Over the last decade, FinTech has become an independent sector in its own right, increasing the pace of innovation across the entire industry.

 Competition, regulatory requirements and the calibre of the teams involved are three key elements in the industry’s constant state of flux. An array of secondary factors are also adding to the mix, combining to deliver an impressive level of innovation.

Three primary elements

At every level, the industry is driven by competition. Leadership teams recognise that if they don’t keep bringing prices down, their competitors will quickly find ways to undercut them. While loyalty and relationships will always be very important for the market, price is a major consideration. This creates a constant appetite for quicker, more efficient ways of doing things.

The second element is regulatory expectations. Just as technology is changing what we can do, it is also making it easier to regulate. Trades are being tracked with a level of granularity that would have been inconceivable a decade ago, and because regulations are coming from multiple jurisdictions, institutions are expected to report on different things in different ways (as well as the same things in different ways). Making sure that the regulators are satisfied is a major catalyst for change and innovation.

The third element is the calibre of the people involved in the financial services. The downsizing of the banking industry over the last ten years has meant that a number of highly-skilled and very experienced people have found themselves free to pursue some fascinating ideas. In some cases, they’ve joined FinTech ventures and turned their attention to some of the deeper structural issues in the sector that are perhaps too specialised for major institutions. This is leading to a string of innovative solutions to challenges.

As a result, financial centres around the world are buzzing with new ideas, some of which have the potential to coalesce into very interesting products and services over the next five years.

Changing emphasis

There are also a number of secondary factors in play.

The first of these is a move towards FinTech vendors as hubs of innovation. The rising importance of regulation and compliance has come at the same time as the downsizing of banks. A decade ago, banks could keep all the talent they needed and look in-house whenever they had a conundrum to solve. Now, all but the largest institutions need to look elsewhere.

Until recently one of the tried and tested routes for successful firms to grow was through leading institutions setting up a division, strategy or technology, nurturing it for a few years (while enjoying first-mover advantage) and then setting it free to operate independently, or selling the division for a decent return.

Coupled with the downsizing, this model is likely to become less common over the next few years as fewer financial institutions will have the depth of resource to support it. As a result, there will be more fledgling start-ups looking for support earlier in their development, which could encourage them to be nimbler and more innovative in responding to potentially more risk-averse clients.

Shifting politics

Another ingredient in FinTech’s cauldron of innovation is politics. Brexit could lead to major changes in the global financial markets, and even though London has long enjoyed an enviable position as the world’s centre for many aspects of financial services, the current level of uncertainty could see its primacy eroded. This could be another catalyst that helps some innovative initiatives move forward as businesses reassess their strategies.

Ultimately, irrespective of the choices of the British public and the subsequent political manoeuvring, uncertainty creates opportunity. London has a heritage of financial innovation that spans centuries, but other centres have been keen to challenge its preeminent position for almost as long.

At the same time as Britain enters a period of internal debate and financial institutions look at their positions to ensure that they are ready for a variety of outcomes, the French electorate, for example, has delivered a government with a modernising agenda. The interplay between London and Paris, those most traditional of frenemies, could be a source of innovation and new thinking over the next five years.

Other financial centres will also be clamouring for attention throughout this process. The growing importance and confidence of Australasia and Latin America, as well as the changing outlook in the US, could well create evolutionary pressure to innovate.

These changes are taking place as the importance of physical borders and location are coming to mean less. Financial services are exceptionally international, and regardless of the changes in individual countries, market participants will continue to focus on getting the quickest, most cost-effective solution that most closely matches their risk profile and meets the regulatory requirements of the countries where they are based and their clients are active.

Enhanced flexibility

But innovation means flexibility as institutions are less likely to fall into the trap of building a comprehensive in-house system that only a handful of people know how to keep working. This is not only a vast improvement from an operational perspective, it also means that regulation and compliance requests are far more easily met, and there is a far wider variety of environments in which to test models and strategies.

A further benefit of flexibility comes in the form of market participants and vendors understanding each other better, effectively reducing the risk that a system will be developed that doesn’t quite do what the traders want.

As ever, there’s risk. Some of the initiatives across the world are destined to wither and die because they are not built on sustainable business models. Businesses are going to need to evolve their strategies and possibly their focus to become sustainable. This is a route that many innovative industries follow as they grow to maturity, but institutions need to be aware of what they are exposed.

Incumbent bias

The barriers to entry as a nascent game-changer are very high, which poses yet another challenge. Incumbents have the advantage of existing relationships and proven track-records which will always weigh heavily in their favour.

Regulators are also rightly risk-averse, a stance which again favours market incumbents. With the current regulatory environment going through a process of rapid evolution, there are significant sanctions accompanying non-compliance which could make potential clients more reticent about embracing innovation.

That said, regulatory changes could help level the playing field from a data reporting perspective, again creating the conditions where innovation can thrive. The implementation process could be highly challenging for many organisations, but they could provide a shared foundation that supports innovation in the longer term.

Living in interesting times

The FinTech sector exists to help the financial services innovate and keep moving forward. Even though the last five years have been a golden age for FinTech, it is difficult to predict what the next five will bring.

The array of fascinating challenges ahead, the deep well of expertise, technology that keeps enhancing and regulators that keep changing what’s expected, all suggest that the outlook is positive.

Website: https://www.hsoftware.com/

Stephan Thoma, Google's ex Global CLO, shares his thinking on an innovation model you can use allocate resources to allow for fresh thinking, new ideas and experimentation. Sign up for more thought leadership pieces here: https://fuse.fuseuniversal.com/commun...

About Stephan:
Stephan Thoma has been an executive level leader in the global talent & leadership development world for over 25 years, most notably at Google for nearly eight years as Global L&D Director. He is now an independent Advisor and Coach to L&D /HR leaders, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for the Digital Economy.

About Fuse:
Fuse Universal (Fuse) is a global learning technology solution disrupting the learning technology and communication space. Fuse has a new approach to online learning, knowledge sharing and communication in the workplace through its innovative technology platform, that supports continuous, social, blended and mobile learning.

Written by Gavriel Merkado, REalyse

In innumerable ways, technology has shifted the power paradigm from the elite to the many and has empowered investors to make better investment decisions. Big data and smart algorithms mean more information, quicker, which ultimately leads to less risk for investors.

Illiquid vs liquid assets

The enabling power of technology is particularly true for liquid assets such as stocks and bonds. Advancements in financial markets technology and data systems have led to transactions become safer, cheaper and faster. Technology has provided a more systematic approach to investment compared to previous methods based more on human instinct and intuition.

Utilising technology to make better investment decisions around illiquid assets is more complex. It’s harder to track the value of illiquid assets like collectibles, art and property due to a lack of transparency around pricings. While these assets have previously had to substitute speed for clarity, there’s now a growing trend of using technology to combine the two to help produce better returns.

Property investment

Prop tech is one area that is enabling better investment decisions. At REalyse we empower property developers to efficiently make informed decisions about where, when and what to invest in. Using big data analysis REalyse tackles the unpredictable element of the market, allowing users to anticipate potential risks, while also cutting the time spent on weeks of personal market research.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platforms such as LendInvest have established a marketplace for investors to find and invest in new and existing property loans. By removing the need for a mortgage, these platforms help investors remain in control of how much they invest in conjunction with other investors. Similarly, companies, such as Yielders, have created opportunities for people to invest in property with shares as little as £100, permitting amateur investors to become equity owners.

Art/collectibles investments

Another example of tech enabling better illiquid investments is Arthena. This platform enables investors to make better decisions around the value of a piece of art. By taking into account the artist’s career, the year the piece was created and an analysis of art auction results, it helps to predict the risk and return on investment.

Financial investments

In the financial world, the rise of robo-advisors has given investors the opportunity to consult detailed data and information before making decisions at the touch of a button. Industry leaders, such as Nutmeg and UBS SmartWealth have provided their customers with around the clock access to their investments, giving them full clarity and transparency without having to consult a wealth advisor during working hours.

Blockchain has made dramatic steps in transforming the investment industry. Forbes reported last year that it could be Wall Street’s most game changing technology advance since the internet. In a highly regulated industry such as investment, Blockchain provides a transparent way to digitally track the ownership of assets before, during and after transactions, and it has the potential to transform everything from how stock exchanges operate to how proxies are voted.

Allocator is another tool transforming the investment management industry by streamlining the process to access the information investors need, in real time and in a format that’s useful. Fund managers control who they share information with and what exactly each investor can access.

Hedge funds are also now incorporating artificial intelligence to give investors quick, accurate and transparent data. An AI fund, such as Emma AI, is designed to operate autonomously in context of wealth management, financial analysis and research.

Conclusion

More than ever before, technology is empowering the investor to take control of their assets. From property to finance across liquid and illiquid assets it is transforming investment decisions.  As we enter the dawn of AI and machine learning, the technology will only get smarter, more intuitive and more effective. Being a technology innovator in the investment sector is a very exciting place to be right now.

Website: https://realyse.com/

CFOs and their teams have long been dedicated to supplying and analysing the data their companies need to make solid, fact-based decisions. However, finance departments have historically been constrained by basic forecasting techniques. Here Jean-Cyril Schütterlé, VP Product & Data science at Sidetrade, explains to Finance Monthly that CFO decision making, spending and innovating is more of an art that we’re led to believe.

The underlying data collection process is often time consuming and error-prone, and the result frequently lacks depth, scope and quality. Not only is the underlying data unsatisfactory, but its processing is suboptimal. All of these approximate figures end up being copied from spreadsheet to spreadsheet and undergo many manual transformations.

This approach has many shortcomings:

• Regardless of the quality of the forecasting process, if the data is not detailed, sufficient, relevant and up-to-date, the result will be inadequate.
• Making the assumption that “all other things will remain equal” is an over-simplification. No lessons are learned from previous errors

Digitisation now gives access to more granular and diverse data about present conditions or past situations and their outcomes. Any data set that may help describe, explain, predict or even determine a company’s positioning can now be stored, updated and processed.

This 360° view provides an opportunity to discover correlations between the collected data and the figures tracked by finance executives in their modelling activity. But this trend line methodology is insufficient in itself to derive valuable knowledge from data diversity.

For the process of discovery to take place, this newly-found data trove needs to be mined with Machine Learning technology.

To put it simply, Machine Learning is the automated search for correlations or patterns within vast amounts of data. Once a statistically significant correlation is identified with a high degree of certainty, it may be applied to new data to predict an outcome.

Let’s take a simple example. Assume you are the CFO of a company selling goods to other businesses and you want to anticipate customer payment behaviour to prevent delays and accelerate total inbound cash flow.

The traditional approach would be to look at past transactions and payment experiences with every significant customer and infer a probable payment date for each.

But if you look closer at your data, you may find that your customer payment behaviours are not consistent across time, that your historical view is missing essential explanatory information about the customer’s behaviour that may or may not be specific to their relationship with your company. You end up shooting in the dark.

Wouldn’t your cash-in forecasts be much better if you had also correlated the actual time your customers took to pay you in the past, with detailed information about those transactions?

In theory, you cannot be sure that this model will perform well until you have run a Machine Learning algorithm on your own data, looking for predictive rules that relate each payment behaviour to the detailed information of the corresponding transaction or you have tested the predictive power of those rules on a set of examples.

In fact, the forecast is likely to be much more accurate than with the traditional methodology, provided that the data you fed the algorithm with were representative of your entire customer base.

That leads us to another question: can I find all this information about my past transactions while making sure they are representative?

Unfortunately, most of this information may not be readily available internally, either because you’ve never collected it or it is not flowing through your existing Order-to-Cash process. For instance, it is unlikely you know whether your customers pay their other suppliers late or not.

But SaaS platforms can capture most of this information for you and Machine Learning software will then be able to discover the predictive rules and apply them to your own invoices to forecast their likely payment dates.

But this is just a start. If inbound cash flows can be accurately deduced, so can other key metrics, such as revenue, provided the data is available. CFOs are the ultimate source of truth in an organisation. They manage skilled resources who translate facts into numbers and confer them credibility. They are therefore the best equipped to tap from as many diverse data sources as available, leveraging the power of Data Science to accurately forecast what comes next and thus gain marketing insight and competitive advantage for their company.

Thus, with their augmented capabilities, CFOs are now poised to be the digital pilots of today’s new data-driven organisations.

Right from the beginning decision makers in business played a vital part in progressing revenue, whether in ancient Greece or today, but they weren’t always the same guy that took care of the books. Here Tim Vine, Head of European Trade Credit at Dun & Bradstreet delves with Finance Monthly into the history of the CFO, and the prospects of financial management for the future.

Corporate structures have changed dramatically over the last 150 years – and so too have executive roles. Even in the last few decades, we’ve seen CIOs go from being a rarity to a mainstay in the board room, and now we’re even seeing the growth of new positions like the Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Security Officer. The CFO role has changed dramatically, as well. From financial guardian to strategic partner and key adviser on the future direction of the business: the role of the CFO has come a long way in a short space of time. So, how is the current business environment shaping the role of the CFO and what will financial directors need to focus on in the future to secure business success?

The history of the CFO

How has the CFO role shifted over the years? For most of the twentieth century, the CFO position didn’t actually exist. Instead, financial managers oversaw bookkeeping and were responsible for annual budgets. They were, for the most part, removed from the decision-making process, and only became more influential when financial regulations became more complex. The position of CFO first emerged in the 1960s and became much more common in the decades that followed. Financial leaders now occupy a key role at the heart of most organisations, and are expected to keep tabs on the big picture as well as the minutiae of every department. No other senior position offers quite the same degree and breadth of strategic insight.

Over the past decade, much has been said about the changing role of CFOs. Long gone are the days in which CFOs were tasked solely with financial management and reporting; instead, the responsibilities of today’s financial officers can stretch from investor relations to strategic growth.

The evolution of the CFO

The drivers for the increase in scope of the CFO role are as plentiful as they are diverse. From increasingly stringent regulations and the impact of globalisation to the transformation of business and industry, the evolution of the CFO role has been a necessary response to the growing demands of a rapidly changing world.

A natural consequence of this evolution has been the need for CFOs to expand their scope. They have had to step up and bear the burden of increased responsibility. Although their role may have become more integral to the success of the business, expectations and pressures to deliver have also multiplied.

More recently– over the past three years, to be precise – CFOs say they have experienced a “significant” (53%) or “some degree” (44%) of change to their roles according to our latest research. Many (59%) respondents reported an increased array of duties, noting that their role now necessitates greater prediction and management of risk and compliance issues, or that they are increasingly being asked to drive the bottom line as well as the top.

As a result of this increased pressure to take on a larger breadth of responsibility, the plethora of the CFOs’ responsibilities now includes everything from taking a more strategic role in their business and working in a multidisciplinary function to analysing customer data and leading strategic mergers and investments.

The current state of play

As CFOs’ roles continue to expand, they cannot to neglect the day-to-day responsibilities that have previously defined their function. When asked to make a like-for-like comparison between their primary obligations now and three years ago, CFOs provided little evidence that they are under any less pressure to perform their ‘core’ tasks, despite growing expectations about what else they can deliver. Our research found that when listing what CFOs see as their main responsibilities both three years ago and today, they identified only slight changes between the two. The usual daily accounting and treasury tasks are just as relevant today as they were a few years ago, but compliance rising in rank to occupy third place and controllership falling to eighth.

While organisations seem to be increasingly reliant on the expanding skillset of the CFO to help them deal with external pressures, many respondents suggest that they aren’t being provided with the requisite level of support to conquer those challenges. Our research highlighted that resource issues are one of the biggest struggles facing CFOs. They do not have a large enough team to carry out all of the work, and time pressures inhibit them from completing the tasks effectively. Moreover, more than a third feel that they are struggling under the pressure to find new growth and revenue opportunities, with 31% noting that they are asked to be experts in too many fields. CFOs suggest that an increasingly broad remit is making it difficult to focus and ensure the direction of the finance function. In fact for many (56%) feel that their employees don’t have access to the tools and technologies that could help them, in spite the fact that a significant majority (84%) say technology solutions are vital to their data analysis and smart decision-making.

What is also evident from the research is that CFOs are concerned with having to meet the seemingly unrealistic expectations which the board has on the finance team. This is further compounded by a trend in team size reduction, with almost two-thirds of respondents sharing that their team size has decreased in recent years. Essentially CFOs are being asked to do more than ever before, all while seeing their resource levels shrink.

Looking into the crystal ball

Looking ahead, data is going to play an integral part of the CFOs’ role in years to come. It is true that the importance of data has already been established; more than a quarter of respondents say that data analysis has become an increasingly vital part of their responsibilities. Many suggest that analysing data it is now one of their day-to-day tasks – and this is only going to increase.

As it stands, over 90% of CFOs state that data is either “extremely” or “somewhat” important in helping them make smart decisions and forecasts.

But data isn’t just about forecasting. It can help finance leaders to better understand customers, gain a better understanding of the market in a globalised world, and improve the organisation’s operational efficiency. Data is also essential in helping identify new revenue opportunities.

Setting the scene for success

The role of the CFO is undoubtedly in a state of change. As it continues to evolve, conflicting priorities, growing expectations and shortfalls in essential resources are creating a high-pressure, high-risk environment: one in which the consequences of poor decision making are becoming ever more significant, such as was the case with General Motors and Enron for instance. In fact, over half of CFOs surveyed feel that it is just a matter of time before a serious mistake is made due to a lack of staff and resources. Providing finance leaders with the data, tools, time and technology to do the job to the best of their ability should be a boardroom-wide concern, given the critical role they play in an organisation’s success.

Movinga recently completed a study which investigates the possible benefits of foreign human capital in Germany. In order to do this, research was conducted into each of the 16 federal states. The number of firms receiving venture capital, the number of patent applications, the unemployment rate, and the percentage of the state that were born in another country were all examined. The findings show that German states with a higher percentage of foreign-born citizens see higher levels of innovation. They also illustrate that attracting more people from other countries does not mean higher unemployment.

In order to analyse the possible benefits of foreign human capital, the diagrams compare the key indicators on innovation and economic prosperity (firms accepting venture capital, patent applications, unemployment) with the percentage of the population that are born in another country. All data used for this report was provided by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

With 81.4 million citizens, Germany is Europe’s largest country by population. It is also the nation with the largest foreign-born population in Europe, with more than 7.8 million (9.6%) originating from another country. However, this diversity is not evenly spread across Germany’s 16 federal states: five states have more than 10% of citizens who are foreign-born compared, whereas five states have a foreign-born population of less than 3%. This disparity is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows that the city states such as Berlin and Hamburg that have a higher percentage of foreign-born citizens are also home to a higher number of firms receiving venture capital. Similarly, Figure 3 displays that the two federal states with the most patent applications (Bayern and Baden-Württemberg) are also diverse demographically, with around 10% of their populations being foreign-born. In contrast, Figures 1, 2 and 3 also convey that the federal states with fewer firms receiving venture capital and lower numbers of patent applications like Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have smaller foreign-born populations.

Figure 1- Distribution of foreign-born workers in Germany

Figure 2 - Number of firms receiving venture capital

These findings convey that people born in other countries are of great economic value, and that an attitude of openness to foreign-born citizens is important in order for support innovation, research, development and growth. The relative weakness of the federal states with fewer numbers of people born in other countries suggests that they could boost innovation and their general economic performance through attracting more talent born outside Germany.

Figure 3 shows Bayern and Baden-Württemberg also have some of Germany’s lowest unemployment rates, whereas Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have some of the highest unemployment rates. This shows that having a higher number of foreign-born citizens does not mean that fewer people will be able to find jobs. Unemployment is higher in the diverse states of Berlin and Hamburg compared to the national average, but this is more indicative of their unusual positions as city states rather than their economic weakness.

‘The impressive amount of firms accepting venture capital and the number of patent applications in the diverse regions of Berlin, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg suggests that foreign human capital helps support innovation and growth’ said Movinga's MD Finn Age Hänsel.

Figure 3

With fintech at the forefront of innovation in the financial services sector, Finance Monthly here benefits from an insightful outlook into the kinds of challenges fintech firms face, in the midst of growing competition and an ever-increasing customer base. Michael Quirke, Senior Strategist at Brand Union here provides the ultimate breakdown of priorities every fintech brand should be considering.

Financial technology (fintech) investment is forecast to grow beyond $150bn over the next few years, and many new market entrants are trying to get in on the game.

The challenge as this evolves is going to be how you stand out. People have to be able to remember your name and who you are. And not everyone can become the Monzo, Xero or TransferWise of this world.

Getting to that space requires a pragmatic approach to branding that takes consideration of the limited factors you have under your control: an often small marketing budget, primarily online touchpoints and (hopefully) an excited team who are eager to spread the word about the new platform. The worries then are consistent with any other company: how do I attract and retain the best talent? How do I meet my growth targets? How do I position this company to scale?

For more technically-minded companies, this ‘softer’ side of creating the brand that people remember can be a challenge. So from our work with Sonovate, a funding platform for recruitment agencies, we wanted to share a few principles from what we’ve learned.

1. Go back to basics - why are you here?

One of the biggest challenges fintechs face is explaining a complex offer. It is very easy to get caught up in industry jargon, or hooked onto a functional sales playbook that served you in a rush when first starting out. People need to understand clearly who you are, what you offer and why they should care. And they’re not waiting to get to know you, so you need to be able to show that in under 3 seconds. Work on making as simple as possible who you are, what you do and why you’re here and you have a good platform for making that creative. Talk it to yourself. It’s healthy.

2. Know your audience

Another challenge - especially again for technically-minded companies - is thinking in benefits vs product features. You need to know who exactly your customer is and how what you’re pitching fits into their lives. For instance, for Monzo they are very humble and focused about what their product does. It’s there as a pre-pay card, they make it as easy as possible to manage on mobile, and they open up their product roadmap to their community of beta testers to add in feature suggestions as they go. The actual feature set is quite small, but they make the most out of each one by being very diligent in UX design and communicating it well. For them, it is a mass audience of (currently) dedicated tech fans and students, but for you it may be B2B or more niche B2C. Think how you can quickly get a ‘map’ of your audience’s life and world, and make sure all product decisions, features and communications are guided towards fitting in easily there.

3. Make the most of your touchpoints

Monzo has bright orange debit cards that draw just the right amount of attention when flashed. TransferWise have their sharply designed ads and a pointedly anti-bank tone of voice. Citymapper (not a fintech, but useful analogy) has their “jetpack” or “catapult” ways of travelling in-app. Small touches of delight you add, on top of the basics, make your experience more memorable and, thereby, more sticky. Building stickiness or virality into the design of your products and onboarding experience has more power than any amount of content marketing.

4. Nurture your community

As more technology companies spring up, covering a wide base of offers, becoming the preferred partner in your category is essential. This means cultivating a community and partnership strategy as soon as possible in your lifecycle - deciding which apps you are going to target to integrate with (see the Slack playbook), and how you are going to reward and engage users to keep them interested. Forming a community platform like Monzo’s has the added benefit of providing regular user feedback, that can feed into the product and brand. On B2B side, the community forum can be doubly effective in helping end-users quickly and elegantly fix issues with the platform; and pass on the experience to friends or family at other businesses.

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate

Email marketing is a skill in itself, but an essential one to get right. However you contact users (whether in-app or on email), make sure that at all times you are a) putting in place a system to manage any concerns or feedback on new features, b) keeping in line with your core brand positioning and tone of voice (so as not to seem inconsistent or overly sales-y) and c) giving users the opportunity to input into the future of the platform. Whether working with B2C or B2B clients this is a huge advantage, and you can always filter and take your own opinion on responses as they come in.

Branding in the fintech age is a very different proposition from the suave logos and airport ads it used to be. But the same classic rules of knowing what you’re offering and why people should care apply. As long as you are clear enough on these things to let your teams get creative with them, you shouldn’t go far wrong. We look forward to seeing you on-stage at Finovate Europe 2018.

This month’s Executive Insight section features Aaakash Moondhra - the Chief Financial Officer at PayU, a leading payment services provider. PayU capitalises on its payments heritage and expertise to deliver financial services in high growth markets, supporting over 200,000 merchants with over 250 payments methods and reaching a potential consumer base of nearly 2.3 billion people. What sets the company apart is that it builds FinTech services around the unique local conditions the company finds in its target markets. By making payments and other FinTech solutions as easy as possible for local populations, PayU hopes to have a real impact on the growth ambitions of its customers.

 In his 20-year career, Aakash has worked in range of financial and other roles at companies as diverse as Snapdeal, Andersen Consulting and AT&T, Bharti Airtel Group and Baring Private Equity. Here he tells us more about his role as a CFO and his achievements, while also offering a valuable insight into the FinTech industry.

You joined PayU in September 2015 - how would you evaluate your role over the last year? How has it impacted the company and its performance in 2016?

 It has been an extremely interesting journey and there hasn’t been a dull moment yet. On a tactical level, there’s been the daily cut and thrust of working with the wider company to beat our monthly financial targets.

At a corporate level, one of my main responsibilities is to help set the strategic direction of PayU. Over the past year, I’ve worked on several major initiatives which have put us in a good position to deliver on our growth goals. For instance, putting in place a unique, centralised and federated operating model across our existing disparate technology platforms, which will enable us to scale rapidly while also benefitting from cost efficiencies.

I’ve also supported the strategic growth of PayU through important acquisitions, such as Citrus Pay in India, which are critical to our move from being a payments business to delivering FinTech services across the growth markets we operate in.

Finally, one of my main tasks since I started at PayU has been to establish an even stronger operating discipline and to build a very objective and deadlines-driven culture. The project management mindset I’ve helped instil across the organisation puts us in a great place for 2017.

What is the achievement from the past twelve months that you are most proud of?

 In September, we acquired Citrus Pay, the Indian payments business. This is the largest all-cash acquisition in India’s FinTech history ($130m), making us India’s largest e-commerce payment process company; something we’re all very proud of. The deal is hugely important to growing our footprint in India, which is one of the most innovative FinTech markets in the world and one of our key focus markets.

On a personal level, I’m very proud of the role I’ve played in the transaction. This, of course, included financial and due diligence activities, integration of the two companies, developing a joint business plan and developing a process to support future growth; I also played a part in the relationship side of the deal, working closely with my counterparts at Citrus Pay to ensure it went smoothly.

Aside from that, my other achievements this year have been around enhancing our workforce. I’ve helped put in place a more focused culture and encouraged every member of the finance team to consider PayU as if it were their own business. The idea is to get everyone thinking like an entrepreneur to drive innovation and growth. This has been augmented by some great hires within finance across different regions.

What would you say are some of the challenges of being the CFO of a fast-growing company?

 The great thing about being in a fast-growing company is that every challenge is also an opportunity. There will always be barriers, but it is our role to convert these challenges into opportunities.

The main task is to get the balance of priorities exactly right. There are trade-offs to be made – high-growth against risk management for example, or investment against cash flow – but these can all be managed with the right strategic vision for the company.

Then there’s inorganic growth. Acquisitions are important for companies with big ambitions, but there’s a danger that M&A activity can get out of hand and deals are made for the sake of making deals. The CFO is essential here; taking a dispassionate view of every transaction and only allowing those with real strategic merit to proceed.

High-growth businesses also need to be nimble. In practice this means we must be able to zoom in and zoom out at the same time. Some issues demand a detailed examination, while most can be viewed from 60,000 feet. It’s exactly this requirement that makes working for a high-growth company so interesting; and if the skill can be mastered it provides an agility around decision-making that can help drive growth.

How is the role of CFO changing in fast-moving organisations?

 In recent years, the role of the CFO has started to transform. In the past, the CFO’s primary role was to help balance the books and ensure compliance. Today, the role is far more strategic; the CFO is tasked with keeping an eye on the macroeconomic environment and charting a course through turbulent markets.

Historically, the CFO’s relationship with business partners was ambivalent, particularly if financial considerations meant that the CFO had to block a project. Today, the CFO is seen as an enabler to innovation, working closely with every function to ensure the company is moving with speed. The CFO’s relationship with the CEO is also evolving. While still reporting in to the CEO, the CFO is also becoming a sounding board for the CEO’s ideas, and a good CFO will look to voice a different view to encourage debate.

That’s not to say the old duties have gone away. Indeed, in a world where business fraud feels like it’s growing and corporate hubris appears to be on the rise, it’s more essential than ever that the CFO is a beacon of fiscal responsibility.

How do you overcome the challenges presented by the ever-changing nature of the sector?

 The FinTech sector is a dynamic sector, and it can sometime be hard to know what’s around the next bend. Fortunately, most of the challenges we encounter can be overcome with common sense.

For example, as we operate in a wide range of geographies and markets it makes sense to have the right internal controls, processes, policies and communication channels in place. Similarly, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening in the markets in which you operate; being ready to make quick changes when required. It goes without saying that monitoring risk should be one of the key concerns of the CFO and a task carried out regularly and rigorously.

In my view, the CFO role is more about people management than it used to be. CFOs need to oversee talent, ensuring they have the right people in their team and then working to keep them engaged and motivated. The CFO also needs to ‘muck in’ with the business when numbers are in danger of not being met, and be ready to have those difficult conversations when business people sandbag their numbers. Concurrently, CFOs need to establish themselves as figures of trust and respect within the organisation. It’s a fine balance, but one any good CFO should be able to make.

Finally, let’s not forget the ‘KISS principle’ – many times we see issues that are made out to be more complex than what they really are. I constantly remind myself of the ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ principle to make sure I get to the heart of issues quickly.

What do you anticipate for the global FinTech industry in 2017?

 In 2017 we will see growing levels of payments innovation coming from all corners of the globe, challenging that of the most developed markets.

At PayU we have first-hand experience of high-growth markets such as India, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and we are already starting to witness impressive payments innovation as governments and entrepreneurs capitalise on the smartphone revolution in these regions and citizens’ increasing access to digital channels.

That is one of the most thrilling things about my industry today: the continually shifting focus of innovation.