How outgoing CFOs can avoid leaving a hole in finance

Maybe you’ve noticed: There are a lot of newbies out there.

First-time CFOs accounted for 64% of global CFO appointments in the first half of 2026, according to the most recent CFO Turnover Index from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

But even if there are plenty of fresh-faced CFOs to go around, they mostly already know how to find the coffee machine: The number of external first-time CFOs at S&P 500 companies has dipped from 15% to 5% since the first half of 2022, according to the firm, while internal first-time appointments have hovered between 56% and 61%.

Couple the first-timer stats with another major turnover trend—retirements and moves to board roles comprised 60% of CFO departures in the first halfAnd there are plenty more S&P 500 CFOs within five years of retirement age, according to Cowen Partners Executive Search. Related resources: The CFO pipeline won’t build itself—and you have a complex succession environment: Companies need to fill the roles left empty by retirees, but boards may not be ready to gamble on an external new hire.

“In a perfect world, everybody would love a tenured CFO, somebody who’s had experience before, but the reality of the market is such that there simply are not enough experienced CFOs to fit the demand that all of our clients have,” Jenna Fisher, co-global leader of the financial officers practice at Russell Reynolds Associates, told CFO Brew.

Like piña coladas? One of the reasons so many CFOs are turning into former CFOs (with a beach read in one hand and a piña colada in the other) is plain and simple: It’s time.

“We’ve seen, in general, a secular trend over the last probably eight to 10 years where many CFOs have kind of hit their number,” Fisher said. “Capital markets have performed by and large pretty well, and just demographically, their age is such that they’re choosing to retire.”

They’re also ascending to higher roles in the organization.

“You can imagine a public company CFO fairly easily transitioning his or her career to full-time board service and having a pretty good lifestyle, and being able to contribute in a meaningful way,” Fisher said. “We have seen a continued acceleration of CFO promotions into…president roles, GM roles, COO roles, and even CEO roles.”

Changing lanes. That’s all well and good, but Fisher and her co-global leader of RRA’s financial officers practice, Jim Lawson, caution outgoing CFOs against simply heading off to a tropical island without getting personally involved in succession planning.

“I encourage CFOs to own their succession process, to challenge their number twos across areas where they’ve not had experience,” Lawson told CFO Brew. “If you just let them sit in their lanes, the treasurer is just always the treasurer, and the CFO of the largest business or region just stays in that lane.”

There’s an added benefit: You see who’s ready for the top seat. “If you challenge somebody to go into an area that he or she has never been in before, that really is a good test of their curiosity and learning agility,” Fisher noted.

You’ll also want to be intentional about what kind of training you’re offering your direct reports before you ride off into the sunset. Recently, capital markets and investor relations experience has become especially crucial for would-be CFOs, Fisher said.

“We’re spending just as much time referencing candidates with people in the market to get a sense for their reputation as we are with their internal colleagues that they’ve sat shoulder to shoulder with,” she explained. “It’s because the markets have become really unrelenting, and even an experienced CEO will want a CFO who has been on point to be sharing the story externally.”

Skill seeker. And that brings us to those aspiring to be a CFO: They will need to be intentional about skills development.

One, as noted above, “It’s really imperative they’ve had some exposure to investor relations at a minimum if they didn’t come up through the capital markets pathway or banking,” Fisher said. “It’s almost a non-starter for a public company to recruit in or promote an internal first-time CFO if he or she hasn’t had that exposure and investor-facing experience.”

Lawson added, “There was a huge emphasis for the greater part of 10 years on the operational CFO, and [now] our clients are really looking at somebody, both their internal CFOs and maybe if they’re looking externally, that understand markets and can look at the bigger picture.”

Two, board exposure is just as crucial, Fisher noted.

“[Make] sure you have that relationship, because often the dynamic we will see happen is that there will be an internal candidate, and he or she will be compared against an external candidate,” she explained. “Some of the time, that person will have already been a public company CFO, and boards are, generally speaking, risk-mitigating entities. If they don’t know that internal candidate well, they may be a bit reluctant to promote somebody who’s not been a CFO before, if they don’t know them.”