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CFO Brew

Courtney Vien

cfobrew.com

Employees are key to detecting potential fraud

Harness the power of whistleblowers.

Natasha Piñon

The ticking time bomb of shrinkflation 

Cookie Monster (and President Biden, and seemingly everyone else) hath spoken. 

Lawsuits against CFOs are on the rise

They’re rare, but still a risk worth knowing about.

A circle with an exclamation point icon denoting financial risk management

Risk Management

Alex Zank

Want to know more about risk management best practices? Join us virtually or in-person for our upcoming live event, Risky Business: Navigating Compliance, Risk, and Regulation in Finance, in NYC on September 16, for more on navigating through these risky times. 

These days, being a CFO means a lot more than staring at spreadsheets and crunching budget numbers. Among other non-financial duties, most CFOs are asked to lead enterprise risk management (ERM) initiatives, a recent Gartner 

Finance leaders “bridge the gap” between risk owners and leadership in their organizations where there would otherwise be a disconnect, according to a 2024 KPMG 

 on the CFO’s role in ERM. Being a link between the two groups means CFOs help ensure “risks are prioritized, capital is allocated, and informed decisions by leadership are made,” the report continues.

Kristen Peed, chief risk officer at HR software and services company Sequoia and board president at risk managers’ society RIMS, said she works closely with the CFO and other senior leaders “to create that strategic vision for the company” around risk management.

CFO Brew recently spoke with Peed about her relationship with the CFO, the finance leader’s critical role in setting risk management strategy, and how organizations can be risk management virtuosos.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are organizations thinking differently about risk management than they may have in the past?

The successful organizations are actually thinking about it differently, and they’re using risk management as a tool to become more proactive about opportunities and risks they see, rather than just reacting in the moment. I think that’s critical for a company to grow and succeed is to become more proactive, and risk managers are able to use things like predictive analytics and frameworks to help guide their decision-making process and make recommendations to the C-suite, the founders, [and] the board of directors.

Where do chiefs of risk management fit into leadership in those successful organizations?

I was reporting to our CFO [Bob Lawson]…but I was elevated [to chief risk officer] and I report directly now to the CEO. I think the role of chief risk officer is being viewed as one that is critical. That doesn’t mean that I don’t work closely with the CFO on day-to-day tasks, but we’re working collaboratively together to create that strategic vision for the company. The other stakeholders I work with a ton are our chief legal officer, especially when it comes to risks that have already happened, and our CISO.

How do risk management leaders typically work with the CFO?

You have to define—and your CFO is going to really help you define this—what your risk appetite is. They can help frame it for the CEO as well, about which levers need to be pulled, when there’s a certain threshold.

When we were setting up our framework around frequency and severity, it was really critical that we all collaborated together to understand the financial impact that different risks or opportunities could have on the business, where we want to invest our money, and how [that could] lead to a better outcome. The CFO is somebody who really speaks that language and can help interpret the dollars into your risk factors as well.

What strategies work in creating a risk management-centered mentality in organizations?

You really shouldn’t stop at leadership. You have to have a risk-aware culture that permeates all the way down so that the entire company views themselves as a risk owner. I’ll give you a great example for Sequoia. We take our privacy and security super duper seriously. In my less than two years, I’ve had more training around that than I probably had in the prior 10 years at other companies all combined. We have two phishing email attempts every single week for every single team member, and they are using AI to create these simulated emails, and so they’re really smart…

It really creates a risk-aware culture on something that we see as one of the most critical things for us to protect. And by training and practicing every single week, I think it empowers our team members to be able to recognize the real attacks when they come.

A look inside the CFO and chief risk officer symbiosis

CFOs can help define risk appetite and collaborate with other company leaders on broader risk management strategy.

Jesse Klein

When times are scary, it helps to have a guide who knows the way forward. With 

 lurking, we reached out to someone who’s weathered multiple recessions.

Paul Achleitner is former chair of Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board, former CFO of financial services giant Allianz, and a former Goldman Sachs partner, and is now a newly minted author with his first book, 

To help calm possible CFO anxiety, CFO Brew asked Achleitner about the possibility of recession, how a recession now could differ from past ones, and how CFOs need to be prepared.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

I’ll just start with the biggie. Do you think we are on the precipice of a recession?

We all know recessions do come. The timing of them is always relatively uncertain…If everybody says no, then suddenly something happens. I think the risk that we currently have is the next recession will probably be triggered by a political act. We have an environment where regulatory activities, not just regulatory, but government interventions, are actually the rule rather than the exception. And I think some of those have the potential of triggering a recession. So I wouldn’t want to forecast when that happens, but I would say it’s definitely sure that it will.

What are some similarities between this moment and other pre-recession periods that you’ve experienced?

The similarity could be called what people have called in the past 

. I think we are again in a situation where market exuberance exceeds the hardcore realities that we actually are experiencing in terms of hard facts and numbers.

What’s different is we are right now undergoing very deep and very significant structural changes globally, in terms of 

, but also in terms of technological innovation and disruption. That is in itself already a huge challenge for business, but in a quote unquote “bullish” market environment, you can actually deal with that easier than in a recessionary environment. So the risk…is that those two are overlapping each other, and that could actually put people into quite severe tests.

What could be different about a new recession compared to others we’ve had in the past?

One is the significant technological disruption that we are currently seeing…The second thing that is going to be different is that we are in a world that’s no longer flat. We are in a world that’s fluid. We have governments that will focus on their domestic audiences and interests. And there is therefore a low likelihood that there will be joint, global, well-coordinated efforts that will deal with global economic issues, which we have had in the past and which have been rather beneficial.

And finally, what’s also different is the ubiquity of social media, which will put an enormous pressure on companies.

Is there something CFOs should be doing differently this time around to prepare?

I would argue, flexibility to react to very different kinds of circumstances. And flexibility to build that into your business model, be it supply chain issues; we’ve learned the criticality of not being reliant on just one or two suppliers during the Covid situation.

I think the question of how to continue to attract talent in a very difficult type of environment will continue to be a very important element that will distinguish those people who get through such a crisis in a better fashion than others.

Strategy is a lot about what not to do, rather than just what to do. And I think focus is something that becomes even more relevant in a recessionary environment, because you can’t afford all the niceties.

We also live in a world where everybody is looking for charismatic leadership, and confuses very often charisma with competence. So one of the jobs that CFOs actually have is to keep people under control and not fall for the seductiveness of narrators, and not just go for convincing stories, but look at facts.

A portrait of former chair of Deutsche Bank and former CFO of Allianz, Paul Achleitner, against a brown background.

Former chair of Deutsche Bank and Allianz CFO chats about recession 

Paul Achleitner sees a new type of recession on the horizon, and outlines how CFOs should be preparing differently. 

 going on right now, CFOs might feel badly in need of a win 

. They may be surprised to find that small victory when they renew their organizations’ property insurance policies.

After several years of what’s known in the insurance industry as a “hard” market—think all the bad stuff, like higher premiums, more restrictive coverage terms, shrinking coverage availability—things have finally turned in the insurance buyer’s favor. That’s right: Rates are finally coming down for many, by as much as double-digit percentages.

Prudent buyers can take advantage of this by shopping around, insurance brokers told CFO Brew.

 The tables finally turned in the commercial property insurance market thanks to a number of factors: A softer reinsurance (insurance for insurers) market, increased insurer profitability, and more market competition all played a role, the brokers said.

“Anytime you have profitability, it’s going to open up doors for [insurers] to want to write more of that business, because they all have their goals,” Ron Guerena, SVP of property and casualty at Woodruff Sawyer, told us.

, HUB International estimated rate changes on commercial property policies ranged from 15% decreases to 5% increases, based on factors like whether a policy had multiple insurers or a single one, organizations’ risk profile, and geographic exposures to risks like wildfires or flooding. “The property market has quickly reversed course from needed rate increases over the past several years,” the insurance broker noted in the report.

Organizations with shared and layered programs—meaning more than one company is insuring their property risks—are seeing greater rate reductions than those with just a single insurer, according to Blake Giannisis, North American property practice leader at HUB.

 Since insurance may be cheaper for the first time in a long time, now's the time for organizations to get more out of their policies, Giannisis told us.

“We’ve got a lot of clients and prospects…that have said they’ve had to give up coverages that they really still feel they need, or they’ve taken on higher retentions just as a function of cost and tolerance,” he said.

Now that rates are down, Giannisis said he’s advising organizations to “reinvest some of that premium into the insurance part of the business, rather than just take it all as savings.” That could be through decreasing deductibles or buying additional limits.

It’s important that organizations not start slacking on their presentation as an attractive risk, Guerena noted. Insurance companies still want to see that buyers have a healthy capex budget along with detailed mitigation and response plans for their properties.

“A client that knows their risk well often does well with insurers,” he said.

Giannisis cautioned that not all organizations should automatically shop around for better rates. “If there’s a long standing relationship [between insured and insurer], there’s a lot to be said for that,” he said.

 The competitive environment was apparent in insurance companies’ earnings results.

Travelers lost some large accounts to competition because of “terms and pricing that we weren’t willing to accept,” Greg Toczydlowski, its president of business insurance, said during an earnings call last month. Travelers wrote $885 million in premiums—a measure of how much business it brought in—in its “national property and other” market in Q2, a 3% YoY decrease, according to an earnings release.

Similarly, Chubb has backed away from opportunities where it felt others were being a little too aggressive on pricing, according to CEO Evan Greenberg. Competition is particularly stiff for larger accounts. Greenberg noted that Chubb has fared better with smaller and midsize organizations.

“A lot more capital is chasing the property business and prices are softening, while terms and conditions remain steady,” Greenberg told investors in late July. “We are, of course, disciplined and we’re not going to write business below an adequate price. While others are leaning in, we’ve begun walking away where necessary.”

A pink piggy bank with a black umbrella standing out of the top of it sitting on a small desk with a grey background

It might finally be time to shop around for better property insurance rates

Experts say organizations have a chance to save on rates and bolster coverage.

President Donald Trump’s recent firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer had many 

 whether future jobs data would still be objective and accurate. Less reliable data, whether real or perceived, would make it harder for business leaders to predict where their organizations are headed and make strategic decisions, experts told CFO Brew.

Trump’s nomination of EJ Antoni, chief economist of the conservative Heritage Foundation, as his 

 didn’t seem to do much to quiet those concerns.

Antoni is a “longtime critic” of how the agency has handled employment data, the Wall Street Journal 

. He can expect some stiff questioning over how he’ll handle any results that may anger Trump, 

, which also noted that economists “worry that Trump aims to politicize the agency.” Antoni also 

 the BLS should stop posting its monthly jobs report “until it is corrected.”

 with Trump’s claims that the BLS rigged jobs numbers to make him look bad. With Antoni potentially leading the bureau, “I think things have the potential to get even hairier,” Abigail Hall, an economics professor at the University of Tampa, told CFO Brew.

Antoni’s criticisms of the BLS “ring some alarm bells with economists who work with this data,” Hall said. Economists may start to question the accuracy of future jobs reports and worry what changes the bureau will make to its research methods, she added.

But what does the BLS chaos mean for CFOs?

 Experts told CFO Brew that all the commotion going on at BLS is just one more contributor to the 

 organizations are contending with this year.

Alexander Bant, chief of CFO research at Gartner, likened the uncertainty CFOs must face to trying to land a plane during some less-than-desirable flight conditions. As an indicator, the jobs numbers are like the plane’s altitude, because of how important they are in business decision-making.

“If that indicator is wrong, [CFOs] will slam into the runway,” Bant told us. “If they are not forecasting demand correctly, if they’re not forecasting cash correctly, if they’re not working through their supply chains and their inventories and understanding the inputs to demand, their altitude will be off.”

Businesses will have a harder time making decisions when they’re not certain the data they’re using is accurate, according to Hall. Combined with other factors (see: tariffs) contributing to an 

, “it makes it really difficult for people to make medium-term and long-term plans, and that is fundamentally detrimental to economic growth,” she said. “Because what do you do when you don’t know what’s coming, or you don’t have good…information? You adopt a wait-and-see approach.”

An economy doesn’t grow if organizations adopt a holding pattern, Hall continued. “At best, you wind up with a kind of stagnation, and then certainly at worst, you wind up with bad decision-making.”

The problem runs deeper than the headlines.

 There’s an inherent challenge around real-time surveys that goes beyond the immediate BLS upheaval.

Gartner isn’t advising clients about the merits of replacing the bureau’s chief, Bant said. Rather, it’s discussing with them the difficulty of relying on real-time data to make forecasts and set organizational strategy—especially when there have been significant revisions to employment numbers recently.

“When there’s as large of revisions as there have been in the last couple of months, I think CFOs welcome an opportunity to present data that is more in line with the actual indicator that they need,” he said.

Indeed, the response rate to BLS’s monthly jobs survey has dropped to under 45% since the Covid-19 pandemic, relative to approximately 60% in the previous 10 years, according to 

 from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. A lower response rate means initial analyses are less accurate “and subject to larger revisions, which would compound the challenges policymakers face in assessing the current state of the economy,” San Francisco Fed researchers wrote.

The problem isn’t unique to BLS surveys, according to Bant. It’s becoming harder to collect survey info in real time and on a recurring basis “across all data and research services in the market,” he said.

Can the jobs numbers be trusted?

 Experts have thoughts on how CFOs should strategize amid employment statistics chaos.

At least someone’s hitting their targets reliably: fraudsters.

 to fraud in 2023 and 2024, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates, based on a recent survey. Two-thirds of ACFE members who responded said they expected fraud to get worse in the coming years.

The 396 survey respondents included internal fraud investigators and auditors; people with governance responsibilities like board and audit committee members; and third parties including consultants and external auditors.

While the ACFE found that companies lost a little over 1% to fraud, the median estimate respondents gave for those losses was 2.5%, suggesting it’s possible that some fraud was still undetected. Employees estimated revenue losses of 3%, higher than respondents with governance responsibility (2%), suggesting staff feel there’s more fraud taking place than executives do, or that other companies’ fraud losses are higher than their own.

Employees, people in governance roles, and external parties have very different views on what factors lead to fraud. Respondents in governance felt the biggest contributing factor was the quality of external audits, while employees ranked that lowest on a list of 10 factors.

However, all respondents named economic conditions among the top five factors contributing to fraud. So, good thing there’s 

Respondents saw cyberfraud as “both the most likely and most significant fraud risk.” They deemed customer payment and vendor fraud as more likely than internal fraud around financial statements, bribery and corruption, or embezzlement.

More than seven in 10 respondents believed the current fraud level in US public companies is medium or high. When asked to evaluate the past and the future, 48% thought fraud had increased slightly in the past two years, and 66% thought it would 

Fraud to increase at US public companies over the next two years

 Survey of public companies suggests more fraud is being committed than companies think.

Fraud expected to increase at US public companies over the next two years

 isn’t the only casualty of the economic uncertainty of 2025.

Cybersecurity budgets shrank from last year, growing an average of 4% in 2025 compared to 8% in 2024, according to a report from cybersecurity firm IANS Research and executive search firm Artico Search. That marks “the lowest growth rate in five years,” the report noted.

Fewer than half of the nearly 600 CISOs polled said their security budgets increased this year, a dip from 62% in 2024 and 78% in 2022. Now, 54% of CISOs said their budgets are “flat or shrinking.”

The report’s authors noted that the change marks “a departure from the trends that defined the post-pandemic recovery years.” The likely culprit behind the slowdown is also the elephant in every C-suite right now: 

This “period of financial constraint” for cybersecurity programs is “fueled by global market volatility and fluctuating inflation,” the report’s authors explained. Not shocking, given the timing: The study was conducted from April to August 2025.

“Once again, we find that security is not immune to macro conditions,” Steve Martano, a partner in Artico Search’s cybersecurity practice and an IANS faculty member, said in a statement. “Most CISOs are not receiving budget increases despite security typically being identified in the top five risks for companies.”

Industries that are particularly vulnerable to “global economic uncertainty, inflation, and sector-specific instability” were especially hard-hit; CISOs in healthcare, professional services, retail, and hospitality were among the “most likely to report flat or reduced budgets,” the report said.

While CISOs in certain industries—like financial services, insurance, and tech—reported security budget growth rates above 5%, the authors added that “even among these better-positioned sectors, few are immune to the resource allocation challenges that are emerging as companies reassess spending priorities.”

Office workers at a desk and floating passwords and medical symbols in between two large-scaled lock icons. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock

Cybersecurity budgets are tightening amid economic uncertainty

A new report from IANS Research shows the impact of the uncertain macro environment. 

Cargo theft is getting worse. In 2023, cargo theft incidents spiked 57% YoY, according to data from CargoNet. The trend continued in 2024, rising to “unprecedented levels,” with incidents up 27% YoY, CargoNet reported. And this year, supply chain theft events increased 13% YoY in the second quarter, CargoNet reported. Thieves steal an average of $203,586 worth of cargo value per incident, it estimated.

The threat is not only growing but evolving, prompting the need for new investments and a mindset shift by organizations. “We have to go to more of a hunter type of mindset versus being prey to these folks,” Keith Lewis, CargoNet VP of operations, told CFO Brew. “The clues are there every time they steal a load. We just have to start using those clues to prevent fraud.”

 Modern cargo criminals are more akin to a well-organized cybercriminal network than the opportunistic band of thieves with a sprinter van you might imagine.

“The reason why this is different is because [criminals] are using technology to trick supply chain participants into delivering, essentially, the freight right to them,” Bob Costello, chief economist and SVP of international trade and security policy with the American Trucking Associations (ATA), told us.

One popular method is known as “double brokering,” Costello said, where a criminal will pose as a trucking company and secure a contract from a shipper to take their cargo to the delivery point. They’ll then contract with an actual carrier to deliver the load, but to a different address. The cargo is gone before anyone notices.

Criminals also use phishing email campaigns to steal a carrier’s identity, according to Lewis.

Thieves know what products are in high demand and will adjust their tactics accordingly. Classic examples are food and beverage products or electronics, which criminals may target more during periods of inflation.

“We’re not seeing an increase in the amount [of cargo stolen] based on inflation, but they will target certain commodities that are more impacted by inflation,” Scott Cornell, national transportation and inland marine practice lead with Travelers, said during a recent webinar hosted by the insurance company's public policy division

The effects go beyond the lost cargo itself. CargoNet noted in a news release that the thefts have “ripple effects including increased insurance costs, delivery delays, replacement orders, and ultimately higher consumer prices.”

Trucking company Landstar System, which has a wholly owned insurance subsidiary servicing owner-operators, recently reported that its Q2 insurance and claims costs increased $3.2 million YoY to $30.4 million. The heightened costs were due to “increased severity of trucking accidents [and] cargo claims primarily due to strategic cargo theft,” CFO Jim Todd told investors on an earnings call.

 Companies are beefing up their theft and fraud prevention capabilities.

Wabash, a manufacturer of semi trailers and truck bodies, acquired a cargo security technology firm earlier this year to “address the increasing demand” for freight security tools, according to a company news release. Logistics software company Descartes made a similar move last September when it acquired a carrier onboarding and risk monitoring company for $24 million.

As for Landstar, it’s “investing significantly” to combat theft and fraud, according to Matt Miller, its chief safety and operations officer. It created a fraud department and is “continuing to add people” with subject-matter expertise to the department, Miller said on Landstar’s Q1 earnings call in May.

The trucking company is also investing in technology to combat the threat. It’s using solutions from “various vendors that are helping us attack on all fronts, whether it’s people, education, or technology,” Miller told investors at the time. “But this is an area where you’ve got to remain vigilant and you’re really always playing defense here.”

How to shore up your own fences: CargoNet’s 

Lewis recommended that organizations combating theft and fraud get creative and hire people with experience outside the logistics sector.

“I’d start looking at hiring a different generation of folks that maybe came out of the banking industry or the credit card industry that focused solely on fraud,” and who are good at identifying “indicators” of fraudulent activities, he said.

Organizations can’t control what method thieves will latch onto next, Travelers’ Cornell said. He said that, instead of focusing on the criminals, organizations should ask themselves, “How do we prepare?...How do you work to make sure that you’re a harder target than the thieves really want to spend time [trying] to get through?”

Correction 08/06/2025: This piece has been corrected to reflect the host of the webinar.