Strategic finance?
I'm looking at getting out of banking finally and am still trying to get a sense for what all these corporate roles actually entail. Think I have a good enough sense for FP&A and Corp Dev.
But anyone care to explain what the hell Strategic Finance means? Euphemism for FP&A?
Comments (29)
I'm in what you would call a "Strategic Finance" role. In short, yes, it is a euphemism for FP&A, but keep in mind that FP&A roles vary significantly across companies, so don't get caught up in the titles. I'll give you my experience in evaluating FP&A roles.
A little on my background, I graduated from a target school and jumped directly into a corp dev role out of undergrad (feel free to check out my post history). Decided to transition into a more operational role where I could leverage my finance skillset. In my search, I would characterize FP&A roles into two buckets: (1) "vanilla" FP&A roles where the role seemed to be more focused on monthly reporting and accounting and (2) "strategic" FP&A roles where it seemed like the finance team was driving the decision making process in the organization. Here's what I noticed about the roles:
Companies
People
Job Descriptions
Again, this does not apply universally to all corporate finance roles, it is just what I observed in my job search. Happy to expand on it more or hear what others have to say.
Thank you a bunch for that response! Extremely helpful. Seems like it really varies from one company to the next.
Lol, is this PepsiCo?
At a tech startup actually. We run pretty lean - 4 people on the FP&A team (incl. CFO) supporting an organization of ~500
How do you recruit for these roles? Networking or applying online at company portals etc.
类似于上面的海报,在短时间内FP&A / corporate finance I found the finance team was split into two main groups: 1) traditional FP&A and 2) strategic finance. The folks in group one focused moreso on month end reporting, variance analysis, short term projections (e.g., rest of year, next year, etc.). I was in the second group, which was smaller and focused on more long-term and ad hoc finance projects. That included working with operational leaders to maintain a five year model, industry specific M&A,WACCanalysis, etc. The second group usually looked for ex-bankers, corp dev professionals, consultants, etc.
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What are typically salary progressions/ranges for positions in strategic finance? I assume they are in line with typical FP&A roles, but slightly higher?
Great question
Thanks for this thread. I was just about to post about this. I always hear about strategic financeworking in TMTIB and it seems most tech companies call their finance teams this even though their teams may just do FP&A type work.
Along with compensation at each level, what is the lifestyle like compared to vanilla FP&A and IB (including hours and culture)? Also, is it generally "easier" / easier to succeed compared to vanilla FP&A and IB? I sometimes have found the technical aspects of IB challenging, but it's mostly due to the lack of direction or guidance I get. Finally, how high is the bar to be promoted / stability of your job? Just wondering as I've noticed even as an Associate, that there are a lot of areas for mistakes and people can get judged pretty harshly for even small mistakes, which I know does not do them any favors for performance reviews.
Great questions and I'll try to answer them based on my experience and observations.
Team Names / Titles- As you observed, team names / titles do not matter. A "Strategic Finance" team could be a typical "vanilla" FP&A role and an "FP&A" team could be the "strategic finance" team. You honestly won't know just by looking at titles / job descriptions. The best way to ensure that you don't trap yourself in a "vanilla" FP&A role is to (1) research the backgrounds of individuals on the team and (2) networking with teams that you're interested in. The strategic finance roles that you want to be in are the ones where you own the P&L and are in the driver seat of the company. At my company, ultimately we are making decisions on how we allocate capital and derive the greatest return on that capital. We decide whether new products or projects are worth investing in, drive hiring decisions to optimize workforce efficiency, and determine the long-term financial "story" that we want to follow.
Compensation- I can't comment on what "typical" compensation looks like, but can share my experience. I came into this role with 2 years of experience out of undergrad. Comp for my first year in this strategic finance role was $110K all-in ($90K base, $10Ksigning, $10K bonus).
Lifestyle- This varies a lot, but it's much easier thanIBthat's for sure. My hours range from 40 - 50 hours a week when things are easy to 70 - 80 hours a week when things get really busy (e.g. upcoming board meetings, leadership strategy sessions, etc.). However, during those hours, I have very little downtime.
发展/“方便”- Again this really varies, and I think you can judge by the team composition. If your team is full of ex-bankers and consultants, expect the bar for advancement to be high and the tolerance for errors to be low.
+1 Big Hero 6ix's comments are also consistent with my experience in strategic /corporate finance
Wanted to also pose this question so everyone could see rather than getting hidden under replies.
How complicated is the modeling / do you think the work you do is very repetitive / monotonous (or can be after a few years)?
Given the high expectations and low tolerance for errors, do you see either yourself or other colleagues (esp those who came from IB) working much longer hours to make sure their work is the best it can be (like 80-100 hours)? Maybe even coming in on weekends to continue working on their workstreams and projects?
As with everything, it depends. Most difficult modelling I've done was in a treasury/cap markets role or project, but generally you're not creating anything earth-shattering. I think it's important to realize that strategic finance groups are expected to wear many hats and be capable of producing models for any sort ofassessment or scenario analysis, so you generally need to be a strong modeler and be a capable and creative problem solver to stand out. Good finance orgs at F500 operate like a well-oiled machine, whereas at smaller orgs finance groups are going to be much smaller, and may only have a few people working on company-wide initiatives - not uncommon that you're on a project with no one else to rely on that has done it before.
Monthly reporting does get repetitive, but you get less involved as you gain seniority. The work is also highly influenced by where the company is in their strategy, but this group is well-positioned for the most interesting work (capital markets activity, M&A, contract negotiation, IR initiatives & long-term planning).
I've seen people from non corporate backgrounds (IB/ER) both do well and struggle. To your point around putting in hours.. I've seen and worked for ex-bankers that have never pushed back on deadlines and will say yes to all work to the point that they HAVE to work a lot of hours. While they're always commended for getting work done, there are many times that things are presented too soon or what's presented could have been done better. Also have seen exIBpeople struggle with understanding internal systems and managerial accounting concepts.
trippycannonis on point with their response +1. Wanted to piggyback off their comment with one of my own thoughts:
Modeling here is just different than the modeling you're doing in banking so it's hard to compare it. The difficulty in modeling in a corporate setting comes from translating complex business issues onto an Excel spreadsheet. As trippycannon mentioned, you'll have to rely on your creative thinking and problem solving skills to succeed in this area. I'll compare this to the modeling that I did my corp dev role. Most of the modeling I did back then consisted of your typicalDCFvaluations,LBOs吸积/稀释分析SotP等等。在very core, you just know how to construct one of those models when asked because it's been done so many times before/been taught in classes/existing templates. However, in my new role, I'm modeling out something like "what would happen if we were to change X policy for our customers or add Y feature to our product?" I'm usually starting from a completely blank slate and have to think creatively and work with stakeholders across my company to understand the scope of the problem.
Completely agree with everything that is being said here by Big Hero 6ix. The modeling varies significantly and the problems are much more unique than just valuation methods. One area that I think is downplayed in strategic finance roles is the idea that you need to be able to communicate complex analyses very simply. This is something I have seen even the best modelers in myPEand Corp Dev experience struggle with. InPEand CorpDev, everyone has a high level of financial knowledge, but as you drift toward working cross-functionally it becomes less of the skill of stakeholders and they will rely upon you to provide the information in a way that is clear and actionable.
hey, thanks for sharing this feedback. I was curious - for someone walking into a strategic finance role as you described above, what skills/certifications would be most beneficial to advance your career, outside of being fundamentally sound at modeling and building decks?
The answers above were so helpful and educational. I'm also considering strategic finance and wondered if I could tack on a question as well - what does career progression/ promotion cycles look like in strategic finance? Is it a lot less defined? Do people stay in essentially the same role for a long time or because it's at growthy companies is it relatively easy to get promoted (e.g. to leading a team)? Does the nature of the work change as you get promoted? Thanks!
I think promotion cycles depend more on the type of company you're in vs. the function. In startups in general, promotions are unstructured. Personally, I've been promoted every year that I've been at my current role. It's also not uncommon to see "double" or "triple" promotions at some levels
I would pay very careful attention to the job description and ask good questions during the interview process. This is not likeIBwhere pretty much every bank is doing the same type of work. What one firm considers strategic finance might be very different from what another firm considers it. I did IB>corp dev>strategic finance, so happy to answer any questions you have.
Have experience at F20.
FP&A team did a lot of calendar driven work around reporting, month close, long range planning, forecast for quarter end, work with IR on guidance for next year, etc. .
Strategic Finance team did a lot of short-term work, ad hoc projects and anything that was too "financey" or granular for corp strat team.
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