Business
The remaking of the CFO role is freeing execs up to focus on strategy and AI
A chief financial officer’s job is being redefined. There’s an expanded remit—not just ensuring fiscal discipline, but driving transformation, spurring growth, and cultivating talent for a digital future.
The role of the CFO has been evolving for years, but it’s happening more rapidly today than ever before, said Gina Mastantuono, president and CFO of ServiceNow, during a chief financial officer panel at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. “It’s now a combination of strategic vision, disciplined execution, and enterprise-wide leadership,” she said. “Finance and strategy are now inseparable.”
In addition to her role as CFO, Mastantuono was recently promoted to president, now overseeing global strategy and corporate development. “I tell my teams every day that we have to perform and transform at the same time,” she said.
Yanela Frias, EVP and CFO at Prudential, moved into the role after years leading business units. Closing the books and financial reporting are on autopilot with great teams, Frias said, freeing the CFO to concentrate on enterprise strategy. “What that allows us to do is really partner with the CEO and the leadership team to actually run the company,” she said.
The CFO is the “internal growth partner” on the executive team, helping leaders set bold goals, establish guardrails, and reallocate resources as needed, Ellie Mertz, CFO at Airbnb, said. Mertz helps them unleash the capabilities they have within their team to really push toward higher goals, she said. And she also helps them understand the “appropriate guardrails that we should have so that we can move as quickly as possible while achieving those goals,” she added.
CFOs have visibility across the entire enterprise, offering a unique vantage point, Mastantuono said.
That perspective is increasingly placing finance leaders at the center of company-wide AI strategy. According to McKinsey, expectations for AI and generative AI are particularly high among CFOs, with the belief that these technologies will unlock enterprise value.
Leaning into AI
All three leaders, who are CFOs at Fortune 500 companies, agreed: AI is already reshaping finance and operations.
ServiceNow has been able to realize over $350 million in annualized savings driven by productivity gains, Mastantuono said. “We’ve reinvested a good chunk of that back into the business, but we also allowed about $100 million to fall to the bottom line this year alone,” she said.
Mastantuono said that not all savings must be reflected in profits. You can use them to hire more people or support other growth areas. “If you really lean in with the business and show that it’s not just about pulling dollars to the bottom line—but investing for their future—you gain a lot more credibility,” she said.
Mertz views AI as a “capacity gain,” enabling teams not just to cut costs, but to do more impactful work and higher-value tasks. “Hopefully, we can drop something to the bottom line,” she said. “But even if we don’t, how do we create more capacity in the organization so that we’re faster, we’re quicker, we’re smarter, and we can do more?” she said.
Prudential removed legacy processes in life insurance using AI, cutting underwriting times from weeks to seconds, Frias explained. That allows efficient business growth, and therefore spurs more investment, she said. And this in turn allows teams to do more value work, in finance, for example, becoming strategic partners to the business. “That is what we should be doing versus manual work—that will all be done with AI,” Frias said.
You can view the complete panel session here.
