The next chapter for financial leadership

Daniel Shem-Tov at Tipalti tells a tale of two ledgers

 

Finance leaders are at a crossroads. Their responsibilities span both the traditional ‘guardian of the books’ role and the growing mandate to drive digital transformation and overall business performance.

 

In this way, finance leaders are now expected to handle two ledgers at once: the established demands of payment control, compliance, and audit preparation, alongside the growing demands for speed, scale, and strategic impact. Long-term success depends on mastering both.

 

Although this balancing act presents a challenge, embracing it allows finance leaders to move beyond guardianship and become critical drivers of business growth.

 

 

Balancing the two ledgers

New rules and rising expectations are putting CFOs under increased pressure to prove strong controls. For example, the UK’s failure to prevent fraud legislation, which came into force on 1 September, creates a direct burden on finance leaders to show that ‘reasonable procedures’ were in place in cases of financial fraud. Failure to meet this threshold can result in serious fines, reflecting that the demands of the old ledger are continuing to grow.

 

Fraud itself is also escalating: 93% of UK companies were targeted last year, and nearly three-quarters expect risk to rise again in 2025. For finance leaders, this is a constant test of resilience, demanding stewardship of systems that can withstand rising threats.

 

The new ledger, however, brings additional expectations. Finance teams are now expected to operate at a speed that traditional processes cannot facilitate: 50% of companies take six days or more to close their books, with more than a quarter taking over a week. What’s more, 80% of finance leaders admit excessive manual processes are stalling growth, with accounts payable noted as the biggest drain on time.

 

Taken together, these pressures illustrate that management depends on equally mastering both ledgers - the assurance of governance and the agility to respond at speed.

 

 

From stewardship to strategist

The dual pressures of the old and new ledgers are reshaping expectations of finance leaders. Unsurprisingly, CFO turnover is rising: in the S&P 500, CFO turnover hit a 7-year high of 12% in the first half of 2025, with 61 new appointments. A similar story is playing out in the UK. In the FTSE 100, the share of companies hiring external CFOs has more than doubled since 2019 to 73%. The tilt toward external appointments signals a perceived skills gap. Boards want CFOs who bring transformation, technology and scale experience that the internal bench does not yet offer. For incumbents, the message is clear: stewardship alone is not enough.

 

This is something finance leaders have acknowledged, with 82% saying responsibilities have grown significantly in the past five years, stretching into areas like ESG, M&A and broader corporate performance.

 

 

Embracing the broader role

If the expectations have risen, so too has the opportunity. By embracing this new pressure, finance leaders can move beyond firefighting and become genuine drivers of growth.

 

As we have seen, manual processes consume huge amounts of time and energy, and as long as teams are tied up in rework and reconciliations, they cannot focus on the demands of the new ledger. Eliminating these bottlenecks is therefore critical for creating the space for finance leaders to meet their expanded mandate.

 

One way to remove these bottlenecks is to use a finance system that builds compliance checks directly into workflows. This ensures that every invoice or payment is sent to the right person based on their role and records every step, so an audit trail is created automatically. This can spare teams from the lengthy and error-prone process of having to manually create audit trails after the fact.

 

True automated finance systems do a wide range of work. Helping cover some of the repetitive and operational but important tasks, such as accurately reading invoices, matching them to POs, flagging exceptions, collecting supplier and tax details, and sending payments, with minimal human input, is important. It is this mix of speed and assurance that can free finance leaders from the constraints of manual finance work.

 

This is what it means to balance two ledgers. Assurance that satisfies regulators, auditors and investors, together with the speed and scale needed to help organisations adapt in real time. Finance leaders who embrace both are no longer defined by the limits of the ‘guardian of the books’ role. They evolve into navigators who steer their companies into long-term success. 

 

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Daniel Shem-Tov is EMEA Director of Finance at Tipalti

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and utah778