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The demand for fractional CFOs continues to rise. Requests for interim leaders are up 310% over 2020, according to talent platform Business Talent Group—and half (51%) of its C-suite requests last year were for CFOs. Demand for interim CFOs rose 46% between 2023 and 2024 alone, BTG found.
Consulting firm Sutker Moran, which provides companies with CFO services, has likewise seen demand increase.
“We’ve seen significant growth from a client base, from a people base, from a revenue standpoint, since the pandemic, and we don’t see that stopping,” Scott Moran, the firm’s president, told CFO Brew.
The rise in fractional CFOs can be a boon for midsized businesses that need CFO expertise but can’t afford to put a full-time CFO on the payroll. But it also represents a career opportunity for prospective CFOs, or for finance leaders who enjoy flexible and varied work.
Fractional CFOs can do a lot for midsized companies: Much of the demand for fractional or interim CFOs comes from smaller or midsized companies. Moran estimates that more than half of Sutker Moran’s clients are in the $35 million to $100 million range. They’re most often “privately held, owner-operated type businesses,” he said, and tend to be in the manufacturing, distribution, service, and construction sectors.
Jim Ogan, a fractional CFO who works through the outsourced CFO and HR firm Preferred CFO, told CFO Brew that his clients are smaller, averaging about $10 million to $50 million in revenue. They’re both for-profit and not-for-profit entities, he said, and span a variety of sectors.
These types of businesses need the financial acumen a CFO can provide—at least at certain points in their lifecycles. They may be expanding or selling or in distress, Moran said, or they might not have enough “strength already on their financial team” to deal with a period of economic volatility.
“What’s important to each client is different,” Ogan said. “One wants growth, one wants stability, one wants to be cleaned up.” Smallish businesses can have surprisingly chaotic financials, he said. “It’s amazing how some of these $20 million, $30 million companies, their balance sheets are a mess,” he said. “No one’s been minding the books correctly for years. So we go in and clean it up, and then once we do that, we’re able to forecast.”
Fractional CFOs, or interim finance teams like the ones Sutker Moran provides, can “flex” with companies as their needs shift, Moran said. One of its clients, an electrical distributor, grew from $50 million to $100 million in revenue over the course of five years, he said. Over the course of those years, “the needs of the CFO [function] changed,” Moran said. “Our involvement went in and out with the needs of the business,” and ultimately they helped the owners to sell.
The life of a fractional CFO: Ogan became a fractional CFO four years ago, after a long career in which he held financial management positions across such disparate industries as food, agriculture, manufacturing, and healthcare. He enjoys being a fractional CFO, he said, in part because of the flexibility it affords him. He works remotely, and, several times a year, works from Las Vegas, where his daughter lives, so he can spend time with her and his grandkids.
The work’s interesting and challenging, Ogan said. He’s always learning new types of software and refreshing his knowledge of different areas of finance. That said, there are some downsides. Fractional CFOs face the same challenges internal CFOs do, Ogan said, but across multiple organizations at once, and they “only have a small time window” to address them. (His engagements last around one to two years, he said.) They also have to onboard afresh with each new client, a process which generally takes about 9 to 12 weeks, he said. And, while he has the flexibility to choose his clients, there are naturally some that are easier and more enjoyable to work with than others.
A fractional CFO’s earnings depend on how many clients they have and how many hours they work, but “the sky’s the limit,” he said.
Working as a fractional CFO can also be a stepping-stone to a position as a full-time CFO, Moran said. “People join our team because their skill set is controller [level] or about-to-be-controller [level] and they want to be a CFO,” he said. As Sutker Moran’s approach is to provide its clients with interim finance teams rather than individuals, its younger staff have the benefit of learning from more-experienced executives, he said. “We have people with 20, 30, 40 years of experience that have run companies, owned companies, been the CFO,” Moran said.