Coworking with Casey Hill

Coworking is a weekly segment where we talk to CFOs and other leaders in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. Let us know if you are – or you know – a CFO we should interview.

Casey Hill is CFO at Merchants & Marine Bank, a community bank founded in 1899, which has branches in Mississippi and Alabama. He has more than 15 years’ experience working in finance roles at banks.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in finance?

I sit in a dark corner of the basement with an abacus and a green visor. A joke, but I think that’s the normal caricature of a bank CFO. In reality, I act as a strategic partner to our CEO, advising him on economic developments and the ways certain decisions affect our bottom line. Ultimately, I take a huge amount of internal and external data and distill it down to usable insights so that others don’t have to spend a great deal of time in a spreadsheet, and I relay advice to the germane parties.

How do you think the CFO role has changed over the past five to 10 years?

I think we’ve seen a shift—gradually at first but now accelerating—away from traditional expectations. In the past, almost exclusively, firms would recruit a CPA from their Big Four auditor to step into the CFO role. Now—and this is true in my case—CFOs that are recruited in our industry are generally experts in the business model with backgrounds in data and financial theory. As for me, my undergraduate degree is in finance, and my MBA was heavily concentrated in highly quantitative fields such as portfolio management and corporate financial policy.

What advice do you have for future CFOs?

Strive early on to develop an understanding of people and what motivates different personalities. I buried myself in numbers for a very long time and as much as I wish they could explain everything, they fall short of the people aspect of the job. If you can’t motivate those you work with then all the spreadsheets and analyses in the world won’t make you successful. A CFO has to be a numbers expert, but what will set you apart is also being a good leader of people.

Who’s a CFO you admire or you try to model yourself after?

Scott Goldstein at Summit Bank in Eugene, Oregon, was my CFO counterpart as I served as chief credit officer of that bank. Scott is objectively brilliant with numbers and financial modeling, and was someone I really looked back on when the CFO offer came at my current employer. We still talk, and if I ran into a problem unique to the position, he would be at the top of my “phone a friend” list.

I also have to cite my B-school professor, Craig Lewis. A former chief economist at the SEC, he is the least egotistical, most intelligent person I know. His ability to be completely cerebral and speak in lay terms is incredible, and he serves as an example to me on how to communicate complex issues in a way that the lay person can understand them.

What’s something we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile?

I grew up on a cattle farm outside of a town of less than 500 people. I saw my family work hard, and I worked hard. That environment bred my work ethic and resilience. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

If you weren’t a CFO, what would you be?

Likely doing something else in banking—either in credit or running a smaller institution somewhere as CEO. I love the industry in which I work, and I absolutely love the team that has been put together at Merchants & Marine Bank. Our trajectory is exciting, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else, anywhere else. –CV