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Where CFOs are spending their time
Modern CFOs are clear on their priorities but need to free up bandwidth to spend more time on strategy, business partnering and decision support.
The findings of the India Finance Leaders Barometer survey show that strategy and business partnering feature prominently among modern CFO priorities. Strategic planning and decision support rank highest in their top current time allocation (23% rank it top; 62% in top three), closely followed by business partnering with leadership and the board.
But this tells only part of the story. These priorities are competing with operational oversight, reporting, and compliance requirements, which demand significant CFO attention. Nearly half of the CFOs surveyed (48%) rank operational oversight in the top three areas of current time allocation.
The result is that CFOs are doing strategic work, but not at the level, consistency, or intensity they believe is required.
The chart shows the percent of CFO time spent on each activity today (Now) versus how they would like to spend their time (Ideal). The gap highlights opportunity to shift focus.
When asked how they would prefer to spend their time, CFOs are clear about their priorities. Half (50%) say strategic planning should be their primary focus, and 86% place it in their top three areas of focus. Business partnering follows closely, reinforcing the idea that CFOs want to shape decisions rather than report on them. This indicates a clear disconnect between the current and ideal state. CFOs want to operate as architects of business outcomes. In reality, they remain constrained in their ability to run the engine.
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Operational and reporting drag persists
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Operational oversight, reporting cycles, and compliance remain deeply embedded in the CFO agenda. The prominence of reporting, ranked among the top four current time areas, signals that CFOs are spending considerable time translating data into insight for the business.
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Compliance continues to escalate to leadership
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Despite mature frameworks, regulatory and compliance requirements consume meaningful leadership bandwidth, often due to escalation-heavy processes.
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Technology is not yet freeing up leadership time
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While CFOs are spending time on automation and systems initiatives, they have not fully embedded these initiatives in their day-to-day activities.
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Meanwhile, areas such as ESG and talent leadership are consistently deprioritised, indicating they are still treated as secondary or compliance-led activities rather than core levers of value creation.
For organisations, the question is not about what the CFO should focus on, but what needs to change to enable that focus. The future finance model must:
CFOs want to spend their time shaping strategic choices, enabling faster decision-making, and partnering at the highest levels of the organisation. But realising that shift will depend less on changing priorities and more on redesigning the system around them.
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