Driven by rising demand, corporates are seeking specialized financial expertise without committing to full-time hires.
Growing numbers of experienced chief financial officers are abandoning the corporate grind to take freelance roles for multiple clients—whether in parallel or on a serial basis.
“The demand for [freelance] professional CFOs has approximately doubled” in recent years, says Eusebi Llensa, co-founder and CEO of Outvise, a Barcelona-based marketplace for high-end independent contractors.
Indie CFOs come in two flavors. Both enjoy growing popularity. And both differ from old school consultants because they become trusted members of company teams rather than serving as outside advisers.
Fractional CFOs work mostly with start-ups and growing midsize firms that need high-end financial services but cannot afford or don’t yet want a full-time employee. They work for extended periods with a portfolio of clients to provide the full gamut of CFO services, albeit on a part-time basis.
Two years ago, only about 2,000 LinkedIn accounts featured people promoting C-suite fractional services. This number currently stands at approximately 114,000, according to Sara Dow, CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, and author of Strategy and Leadership as Service.
Interim CFOs take on short-term project-based assignments that cater to their expertise and interests; for example, an M&A specialist might sign on for a few months to oversee a transaction. When the deal is done, they move on.
People who define themselves as interim were more likely to be engaged in January (73%) than during the same month last year (67%) or two years ago (55%), according to the 2024 European Survey conducted by the International Network of Interim Manager Associations (INIMA).
Interim work is growing for all relevant functions, but C-suite and board services run ahead of the pack: They represent 55% of all gigs, said the INIMA report. Individuals skilled in “change management and process optimizations” are in high demand.
To facilitate the trend, a new global industry of independent management platforms and marketplaces is emerging to match C-suite and other high-end freelancers with potential clients. Some handle contracts, payments, back-office tasks, and other services. Top names include Outvise, Malt, True Bridge, Talmix, and Catalant. The CFO Centre, Fintalent.com and iFinance Director count among a subset that specializes in CFOs and top financial pros.
These companies report impressive rates of growth in revenue, such as: up 180% over the past two years; a threefold jump in monthly recurring revenue over the last 11 months; and an increase of 15% to 20% last year.
Chelsea Williams, founder and fractional CFO at US-based Money Management, a financial coaching company, and Core Solutions Group that works with law firms in the US, says she recently had to “Stop growing” lest things get out of hand.
The grandmother of them all, The CFO Centre, has evolved into a £60 million ($78 million) multinational organization since it was founded in 2001.
The industry has come a long way since Sara Dow founded that firm. Descriptive terms had yet to be coined. “Most people didn’t understand what we were talking about,” she recalls.
Despite the recent growth, the phenomenon still flies under the radar of many business screens. “I spent a lot of time having coffee with people to explain the model,” says John Frank, a fractional CFO and founder and CEO at Third Road Management, a business he has gradually grown over the past decade.
Frank echoes fellow industry leaders when he says, “The sky’s the limit” for the future of CFOs as independent contractors. As Dow travels the world, she says, “I get people asking when we are coming to their country.”
Sometimes people don’t wait. Take Rafael Estrela and his partner in São Paulo; seven years ago, they launched what has become BR Experts for the Brazilian market.
The trend is fueled by several developments including supply and demand, as well as from the evolution of the CFO profession in the corporate world.
The first has become obvious. We live in a “take this job and shove it” zeitgeist whereby many individuals embrace the lyrics of that Johnny Paycheck country song to pursue a better work-life balance, more flexibility, and new and more interesting professional challenges.
Take Phil Christmas, for example. As a British fractional CFO based in Spain, Christmas builds his portfolio of clients through platforms such as Outvise.
“I can help out with my two small kids. I can take my 6-year-old to school,” he says. “I am not fully employed as a fractional CFO, but I don’t want to be.”
But it can get complicated. For example, freelancing is often temporary. Nascent entrepreneurs take gigs to stay afloat as they bootstrap their companies.
“They need to fund their lives,” says Matthew Horrocks, head of Private Equity British Isles & North America at Malt, a platform for interims. “It allows them to spend time on what they want to do.”
That’s the sell side. On the buy side, there are two groups: SMEs and startups combine for one; then there are the corporates. For the latter, the use of freelancers is related to the evolving role of CFOs.
When SMEs and startups begin to grow, they increasingly need sophisticated financial services. But they can’t afford to hire a top-notch CFO. What is an entrepreneur to do? Hire a fractional.
For startups, the demand often emerges during early funding rounds. “When they are required to provide financials and data rooms, startups tend to hire fractional CFOs,” says Ömer F. Güven, founder and CEO of Fintalent.com, a platform for M&A and post-acquisition integration experts.
And it’s flexible. “Maybe it’s two days a week, but during the peak fundraising period, it could be 60 hours a week,” says Güven.
For small companies, whether seeking investors or not, a fractional CFO “really serves as a trusted adviser” for the entrepreneur, Frank notes. Says Christmas: “I am 62. My clients are often in their 20s. They are CEOs. They are highly intelligent, but they have no clue” about the financial side of the business world.
If smaller companies fuel the fractional world, corporates dominate the interim one. Sometimes it is something as simple as hiring a temporary replacement for a vacated slot or someone on parental leave.
But corporate leaders are also beginning to understand that they can boost productivity by hiring experts for specific tasks and projects, such as M&A, carve outs and post-acquisition integration. This is related to the growing sophistication of the CFO role, moving from computational to strategic and operational roles; thereby opening up sundry specialist tasks that might be better filled by temporary or part-time workers. Top financial people now need to be “strategic” says Llensa. “They need to ensure that there is a proper ROI.”
As individuals, fractional and interim CFOs might be one and the same, depending on the circumstances. They generally create portfolios of clients, sometimes tapping old contacts, sometimes platforms, and sometimes other networking tools.
Almost everyone agrees on one thing: To be a successful freelance CFO, one needs to be good at self-marketing. In other words, introverts need not apply.
“You have to find clients every day through marketing and networking,” says Christmas. “The type of person who is usually an accountant doesn’t have that kind of expertise.”
To make the roster of The CFO Centre, candidates must pass the barbeque test. Everyone is invited to a cookout. Those who help put sausages on the grill and talk to everyone make the team. Those who “stand in the corner” get cut.
