At the start of the year, the big story was the elections in India, the US, the UK and across Europe. A big year for democracy, then – but, as it turned out, a bad year for incumbency. There’s been a lot of change in 2024. What does that mean for 2025 and beyond?

It’s the last newsletter before the New Year, so it's a good time to reflect. And although some of the 2024 changes are unsettling – the imminent President Trump 2.0 and, more locally, the activation of a raft of tax changes here in the UK – it’s important not to lose sight of the opportunities change presents, too.

I was thinking about that while reading Marcus Sheridan’s book about marketing, They Ask You Answer. It’s inspired by change: we now live in a world of free content, where the opportunity to have richer conversations with your customers can be the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. (In a sense, that’s what this newsletter wants to be.)

If you grew up online, it might not feel like much of a change. But those of us who remember life before broadband see the possibilities today as magical. In recruitment, the opportunity for a boutique like Pitch Hill Partners to research, create, and explore relationships using technology doesn’t just level the playing field with the big agencies – in many ways it gives us an advantage.

Sheridan’s book was written in 2008: the global financial crisis had hit his business hard, so he had to re-learn his customers’ needs and wants. That what a good recruiter does every time they pick up the phone. There’s an old sales mantra, “two ears, one mouth,” and on every engagement we try to understand the precise need for a role, not just note down a job title or spec.

I’ve seen examples of that over recent weeks (it’s been getting busier again – when things change, organisations need to refresh…). I got a senior assignment on the back of a “broken search” that had failed. The client liked the individual recruiter she was working with, but needed a fast turnaround on an interim post – and we listened to what was really needed, to deliver quickly. The person I found, I’m happy to say, has proven so good he might go perm.

And with the “one mouth”, it’s often a case of helping clients frame those needs as freely as possible – getting under the skin of the ask so that we can find exactly the right blend of skills and experience, not just find like-for-like candidates. You can’t go wrong if your first instinct is to empower your customers (at least, not in this business!).

2025 is going to be just as change-y as 2024, I think, not least due to repercussions from this year. But one way to ensure the changes end up positive is to listen more to others and engage in dialogue to understand them better. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

- Ray Nicholls

Things to do...

***Now...***
**Make festive plans**
Lots of people still feel unsettled - personally, (geo) politically and economically. A finance leader with confidence and positivity can have a huge effect. The Xmas party this year could set a tone, and settle nerves.

***Next...***
**Set tactical targets**
Yes, you still need to do the budget-and-forecast planning, but at the start of the year it pays to set some milestones for you and your team - personal and organisational wins. When things are less predictable, small targets offer focus.

***Later...***
**Tick off new regs**
New rules on lease accounting, the Employment Rights Bill, the refreshed Corporate Governance Codes, the new audit regulator… what changes, what does the board need to know? It's a red tape-y 2025 in store.

Lies, damned lies, and...

40% on Overtime

A fascinating survey from AccountsIQ out last month revealed the extent of strain on finance functions. Four-in-ten CFOs reported working extra hours to stay on top of the job – which actually seemed a bit low, given that the research showed three-quarters didn’t feel in control of their company’s financial health, and nearly nine-in-ten face a backlog needing at least one day a week to clear.

Less surprising, then, is the 60% who are scaling up their finance functions so they can better deliver accurate financial information, meet stakeholder information demands – and manage their and their team's stress levels. This is crucial: when the finance team is under strain, things are going to get missed which is bad for business. And it limits the team’s ability to respond positively to change.

With nearly half the CFOs saying the economic downturn is a leading cause for concern, that stretch in the function needs to be addressed. New faces in the finance team might look like additional overhead for the business. But if they mean it can forecast, plan and adapt better and faster – it’s money well spent.

On trend

AI: nope, still not there... for finance, anyway

One other finding from the AccountsIQ CFO survey was that “70% of respondents now acknowledge the benefits of AI at some level.” But hang on: it also notes: “just 15% of respondents now see AI as a threat to their jobs” down from a quarter a year ago. What’s going on?

At the FDs’ Forum in November, in a session on AI in forecasting, planning and analysis (FP&A – which ought to be one of the more fruitful areas for the promised AI revolution), none of the assembled finance leaders turned out to be using AI systems. One was building a contracts analysis tool using AI to highlight certain kinds of clause in the Ts&Cs of bulk purchases; another was looking at whether there might be some utility in demand planning. (But hey: that’s effectively a marketing function, right?)

The prevailing attitude was: it would be nice if the previous generation of analysis tools – such as PowerBI – could be made to work as promised, let alone new AI tech where there’s just too much guesswork (about what they can do… and more importantly how they do it).

Then Rossum released its Document Automation Trends 2025 report, which surveyed over 470 finance leaders across the UK, US, and Germany, and revealed that 58% of finance leaders still rely on spreadsheets as their primary automation tool. One delegate at the Forum explained, “sometimes the best way to understand the data is to dump it into a worksheet and eyeball it.” Or, as the Rossum report put it more formally:"The familiarity, flexibility, and cost-eﬀectiveness of Excel triumph, despite advancements in tech such as robotic process automation, intelligent document processing, and OCR."

Raw AI development is also slowing (this presentation from Benedict Evans is well worth your time… it's his use-case slide above), and frankly the current crop of systems remains pretty ropey at maths – not a good look for a finance function. As Rachel Coldicutt has pointed out (in the aptly named post “FOMO is not a strategy”), AI is currently about “personal efficiencies rather than organisational gains”.

No-one should doubt that AI is coming. But when Excel can still deliver for people who know what they’re looking for – experienced finance professionals – it’s probably not going to trouble your IT procurement folks for a while.

Words from the wise

Are accountants
too cool for school?

Speaking of trained finance professionals… “Well I think accounting is cool,” wrote Bloomberg’s Matt Levine in one of his newsletters last month. (He’s very US-focused, but if you like clever analysis of financial markets, money flows, and governance, he’s must-read.)

Levine loves the fact accounting is arcane and confusing – yet based around shared rules and principles. It’s social, he says – set by people in response to the world; yet it’s also capable of creating loopholes and opportunities for people to make money.

His concern is that young people think accounting is boring, and that’s creating “a dire shortage of accountants”. Emmalyse Brownstein wrote about it, and got a great quote from Richard Rampell, a retired accountant in South Florida: “The pay is crappy, the hours are long, and… the drudgery is especially so in their early years.” The solution might be different ways of representing the profession, and new approaches to training, especially early on.

The problem is, some firms’ solution to the changes working through financial management is to restrict the number of people doing the kind of process-driven work that actually teaches them how to be good financial thinkers (and be able to spot when the spreadsheet is wrong… or an AI has made something up for your board pack).

He cites KPMG and PwC laying off auditors – an area where tech has made inroads, but also where juniors traditionally used to cut their teeth on company accounts and operations. His conclusion to this seeming contradiction? “I suppose the shortage story is something like ‘the Big Four audit firms can still hire accountants to audit companies financial statements, but there aren’t enough accountants to work at the companies and actually write the financial statements.”

Point being: if the company accountants used to get their facility with the numbers by being auditors for a bit, but automation is closing that avenue into the field, how will the Gen Z, bored-by-numbers, recruits get their grounding?

Passé meme of the month

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