Finance Professionals in Industry

Diversity and inclusion in finance aren’t new concepts. It’s long been a top priority for leaders in our profession, and in this year of uncertainty, we need new ideas and diversity of thought to re-imagine the path forward. The tragic events of 2020 have revealed the disparities that were hidden in plain sight — workplaces included. These events have challenged us to recognize that a checklist approach to diversity is not enough to achieve meaningful change.

CFO publishes more than 200 columns from experts, consultants, and finance chiefs of operating companies each year. Of the wealth of advice our authors dispensed during 2020, we assembled some of the best from 10 articles published during the year. These pieces not only struck a chord with readers, but they have also aged well as we enter 2021.

Many finance and accounting teams, under immense pressure and facing resourcing challenges stemming from the pandemic, are turning to automation for answers. The automation space, which grew at a compound annual growth rate of 30% from 2017 through 2022, must now also contend with COVID-19 as an accelerant. While intelligent and cognitive automation is now on the scene, robotic process automation (RPA or “bots”) remains an essential steppingstone in bringing automation into an organization’s operations — and one that stands to yield significant advantages and benefits.

The U.S. Department of Labor issued a final rule Wednesday to clarify the standard for determining whether a worker should be considered an employee or an independent contractor. The rule is one of many contentious regulations that the Trump administration has been rushing to finalize in its waning days and is likely to have an impact on labor relations, pay scales and benefits for workers. It also has an impact on the taxes they pay and whether taxes need to be withheld from their paychecks or simply reported on a Form 1099 and sent to them before Jan. 31. More companies in recent decades have been classifying their workers as independent contractors as opposed to full-time employees to save on salaries and benefits, and that trend has only accelerated in recent years with the growth of the gig economy.

Regulators in several countries approved vaccines, and immunisation against the coronavirus started in December. The vaccines have shown to be highly effective in clinical trials, but the pandemic is not expected to subside for several months. To plan for pandemic uncertainty and risks in 2021, speakers at the Controllers Council roundtable suggested to...

The U.S. Small Business Administration and the Treasury Department relaunched the Paycheck Protection Program on Monday to new borrowers, prioritizing loans from community lenders. The program, funded with $284.5 billion thanks to the latest stimulus package passed by Congress late last month, opened Monday to so-called “first draw” PPP loans for those small businesses who didn’t take advantage of the program last year. “Second draw” PPP loans will be available starting Wednesday. Initially only community financial institutions will be able to make the first-draw and second-draw loans, but the SBA and the Treasury said Friday that the program would be open to other lenders shortly thereafter.