Concept Of Risk Management & Role of CFO in New Era Discussed @ CFO Summit

Bangalore: In today's dynamic environment, to be a successful CFO, it is absolutely essential to have a sharp business mindset and be proactive in enhancing knowledge about all aspects of the corporation such as manufacturing, product development, marketing and sales, in addition to the core area of expertise. Siliconindia had organized the fourth edition of The CFO Summit on 24 August, 2012 in Bangalore. Krieshan Groverr, Group CFO from Wadhawan Group started this conference with his Keynote Speech by explaining the role of CFO. The first interesting panel on "Developing Effective Financial Risk Management Strategies In A Volatile Economy" was discussed by T Ramoji, CFO and Company Secretary from Manipal Health Systems; Somaskandan P S, Corporate Finance Controller - South Asia from Thomson Reuters and Alok Bajpai, India Head & CFO from Aditi Technologies . Alok initiated the panel discussion pointing out that instead of discussing around the usual definitions of risk management, or what are the components and framework of effective risk management, he would prefer to focus more on the increased relevance and changing needs of risk management program, keeping in mind the current volatile economic environment and uncertain geopolitical and global risks. He emphasized on the importance of creating a "risk culture" within each organization where managing and mitigating risks becomes everybody's business. He pointed out that recent corporate events in the past few years and the increased volatility in global economy has ensured that the involvement of the Board is increased in the organizations risk management programs. Similarly, he said, a robust risk management program can also ensure that a large part of corporate governance issues are well covered. The second Panel was on " Evolving role of CFOs in new era", which was discussed by Arunkumar Nath, Vice President - Finance from Lifestyle International; Navin Bhatia, Global Finance Director from Oracle India and Rakesh Sud, Director from Acharya Center for Management Consultancy. Here are some key points that were explained by Navin. # CFOs are changing into connectors and communicators and not just number crunchers. # Successful CFOs know business tricks and issues of tomorrow. # CFOs have revitalized the way finance supports business by applying key transformational practices. # CFOs should build organization brand which is key to overall success. Somaskandan P S, Corporate Finance Controller - South Asia from Thomson Reuters proposed a relatively new concept, that of Outsourcing as a Risk Management Tool, though a sensitive issue and can be considered seriously in corporates. The 3 facets of this are Outsourcing of activities, Outsourcing of projects and outsourcing of capex (leasing). This will help in rapid up/down scaling of operations efficiently and cost effectively. Some of the eminent speakers like Kaushik Guha Thakurta, Director from Resurgent India and Manish Miglani, Assistant VP Marketing Wealth from HSBC explained the concepts of "Challenges for a CFO amidst randomness and clutter: Perspective from global organizations" & "Concepts on Wealth" respectively. This event was sponsored by HSBC and Resurgent India.