8 minute read
Business and industry
4 reasons the CPA license still has value in a corporate finance role
Editor’s note: The following article is reprinted with permission from the Indiana Society of CPAs.
Whether you’ve moved from public accounting into corporate finance or you started your career as a corporate finance professional, at some point in your career you may find yourself asking a big question: Should I maintain my CPA license?
It’s true—many corporate finance roles, including top leadership-level positions like CFO, often don’t require the CPA license. If you’re one of the few finance team members within an organization, you also might face leadership that lacks understanding of why the license provides value to the organization even if you’re not performing traditional CPA tasks. No matter the case, the CPA license has merit in a corporate finance setting, and most of all, for your personal career. Here are four key reasons why.
THE CPA LICENSE POSITIONS YOU AS A LEADER
The CPA designation is one of the most recognized in business and holds weight, even among those who don’t know much about accounting. “CPAs are often viewed as an elite group of professionals…These individuals achieve a level of expertise and proficiency beyond that of a ‘standard’ accountant,” explains the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. Having a CPA license not only signals you have a baseline of knowledge and a demonstrated proficiency in key financial areas, but it also shows you’ve invested time and resources toward becoming an expert. It also means you step up to the plate and are prepared to challenge yourself and continue growing. This positions you as a leader and boosts your opportunities for new roles.
THE CPA LICENSE KEEPS YOU UP TO DATE ON CRITICAL ISSUES AND SKILL SETS
Business is changing fast, and in order to thrive, you need to continue learning and growing. Maintaining a CPA license doesn’t just say you’ve invested in continuing education; it provides you access to the education and skills you most need to continue being a successful professional and leader. Today’s corporate finance professional is often juggling not only financial responsibilities but also roles in data analytics, IT and more. Even if you weren’t maintaining your license, chances are you would still need continuing education to keep up with the evolving demands of the field. CPE classes are evolving to cover new facets of the CPA career, including options especially targeted to help corporate finance professionals lead team members, learn new technologies, analyze data, and manage risks. In addition, CPE opportunities are becoming more flexible. A range of online events cuts down on travel and the need to miss work or incur travel expenses. Overall, investing in the continuing education aspect of your license shows you’re up-to-date on ethics and more in tune with the challenges of modern business. You’re juggling many balls; INCPAS can be a resource and partner in helping you continue to evolve and learn skills that will only propel your career forward.
THE CPA LICENSE KEEPS OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN REACH
Are you ready to stay in your role for the rest of your career? If you’re early to mid-career level, the chances are slim you’ll call your current organization your home for the rest of your career. Maintaining your CPA license keeps you competitive whether you’ll be looking for another job down the road or you’re looking for leverage to move up within your existing organization. Letting your CPA license expire could cost you opportunities and indicate to a potential employer you lack an up-to-date grasp of industry concepts. It can also cost you financially. If you let your license
lapse and decide you want to reinstate it later, you’ll need to pay a fee in addition to restarting CPE and filing paperwork to get it back.
THE CPA LICENSE CONNECTS YOU TO OTHERS FACING THE SAME CHALLENGES
Corporate finance roles can sometimes be a lonely island, especially if you’re with a small organization and the only member of the financial team. Being eligible to be an INCPAS member means access to networking events, conferences and other learning opportunities that help you build a peer network who understands the intricacies, challenges and rewards of your job. Learning from your peers gives you the opportunity to exchange innovative ideas and best practices you can apply to your role. Plus, it makes that island feel a little less lonely.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY
Supply chain woes: Recovery will be slow
BY MARK JOHN REUTERS
Signs are growing that a global supply chain crisis which has confounded central bank inflation forecasts, stunted economic recoveries, and compressed corporate margins could finally start to unwind toward the end of this year. But trade channels have become so clogged up it could be well into next year before the worst-hit industries see business remotely as usual — even assuming that a new turn in the pandemic doesn’t create fresh havoc.
“We’re hoping in the back half of this year, we start to see a gradual recession of the shortages, of the bottlenecks, of just the overall dislocation that is in the supply chain right now,” food group Kellogg CEO Steve Cahillane told Reuters.
But he added: “I wouldn’t think that until 2024 there’ll be any kind of return to a normal environment because it has been so dramatically dislocated.” The global trade system had never contended with anything quite like the coronavirus. Starting in 2020, companies reacted to the economic downturn by canceling production plans for the next year, only to be blindsided by an upswing in demand prompted by rapid vaccine rollouts and fiscal support for rich-world household spending. At the same time, virus containment measures and infection clusters triggered labor shortages and factory shutdowns just as consumer spending was shifting from services to goods. European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane likened the fallout to the aftermath of World War II, when demand exploded and firms had to quickly retool from production of military to civilian goods. Export-led economies like Germany have seen recovery choked by supply bottlenecks to their factories, while surging shipping costs have combined with higher fuel prices to push U.S. inflation to a fourdecade high.
MIXED MESSAGES
Now, as the milder Omicron variant prompts authorities to loosen restrictions, there are tentative signals that supply snags may be unwinding. A recent Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey showed signs of improvements in U.S. labor and supplier delivery performance, and purchasing manager testimonies in Europe also suggested easing pressures. “Although supply chain constraints continued to stymie growth, there were signs that these were past their peak, a factor contributing to a slight easing in purchase price inflation,” IHS Markit said of the UK readout.
While this has raised central bankers’ hopes of a more tangible reduction in inflationary pressures toward year end, they also know that messages from the real economy remain mixed.
Søren Skou, head of shipping giant Maersk, said he was working on the assumption that more people would return to work at ports, more newly built ships would come online, and that consumers would start to favor services again. “At some point during this year, we will see a more normal situation,” Skou predicted. While German shipper Hapag Lloyd also saw delivery bottlenecks and freight prices easing in the second quarter, the big unknown for the sector is just how long the return to more reliable delivery schedules will take.
Supply chain analyst Sea-Intelligence said the current logjam had no precedent but past experience suggested it would take eight to nine months for port and hinterland networks to recover.
“That said, the market is showing no indication that we have started on the path to resolution,” Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy said in an analysis of current trends compared to past data on average vessel delays caused by disruptions.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
NOT LIKE PRE-COVID-19
Any resolution will be dependent on there being no further knocks to severely strained supply chains. Those fragilities were highlighted in February as Toyota, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler-parent Stellantis said production had been hit at their North American plants due to parts shortages stemming from Canadian trucker protests against pandemic mandates. Japanese, German, and International Monetary Fund officials have all meanwhile raised concerns about a worsening of bottlenecks if China’s zero-COVID policy — which has included sealing off entire cities — is deployed in full against local outbreaks of Omicron.
For the consumer, it will be some time before they see any tangible unwinding of supply chain pressures — and they should not necessarily expect a return to prepandemic levels of pricing or availability. Executives at automotive and other manufacturers say they expect prices for a range of raw materials to rise during the year, but they are confident they can raise prices for their products to cover some or all of the increase.
U.S. motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson said it was making do with a much more limited inventory by putting in place a reservation system for customers to order bikes.
Jens Bjørn Andersen, chief executive of transport and logistics group DSV, said the dislocation had been so complete that, whatever emerges, the sector will not look the same as it did before COVID-19.
He added: “I never use the word normalization.”
Additional reporting by Sujata Rao in London; Mehr Bedi and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Balazs Koranyi in Frankfurt; Jonathan Saul in London; Jacob GronholtPedersen in Copenhagen; Jan Schwartz in Berlin; Joe White in the United States; editing by Catherine Evans.
It's time to take charge of change.
The CGMA® Finance Leadership Program — your career accelerator
Ready to master the hottest finance, business, technical, people and leadership skills? The CGMA Finance Leadership Program is designed for you. We recognize your expertise and experience as a CPA by giving you a fast track to the world’s most widely held management accounting designation.
Level up today at cgma.org/flp.
The Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, powering leaders in accounting and finance around the globe
