8 Key Challenges CFOs Will Face in 2025

Chief financial officers have become increasingly important in shaping company strategy and driving innovation. And as the Asia Pacific (APAC) business landscape becomes more complex, with rising pressures from regulatory changes, talent shortages, and technological advancements, so does the scope of the CFO’s responsibilities. CFOs will need to balance their traditional finance stewardship with forward-thinking leadership to help their companies face the challenges (and seize the opportunities) ahead.

In this article, we present eight challenges CFOs in APAC will face in 2025, based on insights from surveys and regional case studies.

The New CFO Role

Traditionally, CFOs were an organisation’s most senior financial steward, reporting to the CEO. Most of their responsibilities revolved around ensuring the financial stability of the company, complying with regulations, and reducing risks.

Today's CFOs, in partnership with other C-level executives, have become active participants in their companies’ sales, marketing, HR, technology, and other strategic decisions and driving overall organisation growth. And while CFOs haven’t given up their traditional duties, they have become more of a value creator than a cost manager.

8 Challenges for CFOs

In light of those responsibilities, here are the main challenges CFOs face.

1. Driving growth and innovation

   Rather than just balance the books and report the numbers, CFOs face the much bigger challenge of helping to identify ways to grow the company. That includes assessing the ROI on developing innovative new products and services and deploying new technologies; working with the sales and marketing teams to finance ways to attract and retain customers; evaluating potential acquisition targets to break into new markets and tap new talent; and forming partnerships where full-on acquisitions don’t make financial sense. Predictive analytics tools can help CFOs identify such opportunities early on.

2. Acquiring the right talent

   More than half of the CFOs surveyed last year by PwC(opens in a new tab) said hiring people with the necessary finance, digital technology, regulatory, and other skills is a high priority. Demand for such pros is intense, especially for those with AI (more on this area below) and data analytics skills. Offering a clear career advancement path to keep current employees engaged while drawing in scarce external talent will be key for CFOs.

3. Complying with regulations

   CFOs across APAC will remain pivotal in helping their organisations comply with ever-changing finance regulations, including those governing accounting, financial management, data security and privacy, fraud prevention, taxes (more on that below), and so much more.

   Where CFOs in the region have a lot of catching up to do is with the still-emerging requirements to disclose their progress on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters. A recent Deloitte survey of CFOs in the region found that only 62% of them planned to implement the processes required to stay compliant with ESG regulations, while less than 30% already had such processes in place. As ESG regulations continue to change, a key step for CFOs and their teams is to use enterprise performance management (EPM) applications to pull together ESG data contained in finance and supply chain applications, and running that data through analytics software.

4. Building a data-driven culture

   There’s no shortage of data for CFOs to analyse and act on. Some 64% of organisations manage at least 1 petabyte (1,000 terabytes) of data, while 41% manage at least 500 petabytes, according to a recent AI & Information Management Report(opens in a new tab). For CFOs, the challenge is to uncover trends to support the organisation’s overall strategy and bring in not only financial data, but also data across different areas of the business, often in real time.

   Putting large volumes of data to work is now within reach of CFOs, thanks to powerful AI and other analytics tools. An ongoing challenge, however, is making sure that data is dependable.

   In a recent global study(opens in a new tab), 40% of CFOs said they don’t trust their organisation’s financial data. And in another study published by Horvath, 57% of CFOs said their organisation’s lack of quality data is the biggest inhibitor to their building a data-driven culture, in part because their data originated from many different internal and external sources.

   Having “one source of truth” must be a top priority for CFOs, and to get there (for starters they’ll need to move away from siloed spreadsheets, outdated financial and other systems, and error-prone manual processes.)

5. Managing cybersecurity and other risks

   A top priority for all CFOs is to mitigate a wide range of risks, including those related to economic instability, geopolitical upheaval, fraudulent financial activities, and cyberthreats. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on data security, given how expensive cyberattacks can be and their potential (in the case of ransomware) to bring companies to their knees.

   The average cost of a cyberattack to organisations worldwide is approaching $5 million, and nearly 95% of them are launched for financial gain, according to a recent report. Then there’s the harder-to-measure financial cost of damage to an organisation’s reputation. CFOs need to weigh the risks and potential costs of cyberattacks against the investments needed to prevent or mitigate them. Then there’s the CFO’s responsibility—and the cost—of complying with various cybersecurity regulations that require businesses to report incidents and invest in a baseline of preventative technologies and measures.

6. Reaping the benefits of AI

   For the most part, CFOs in APAC are still figuring out how to use AI tools to enhance their financial reporting and forecasting accuracy. Only 29% of APAC companies have adopted AI for such important work, lagging behind companies in North America (39%) and Europe (32%), according to a KPMG global survey(opens in a new tab).

   Among the benefits of AI reported by early adopters is the ability to predict financial trends and impacts (65%), get real-time insights into risks (60%), and improve decision-making and data accuracy (57% in both areas). A separate report by Accenture(opens in a new tab) found that AI can help reduce financial planning time by as much as 80% and enhance forecasting accuracy by up to 95%.

7. Communicating the value of technology

   As CFOs’ responsibilities have broadened, so has their influence over their companies’ technology decisions. By one analyst’s estimate, 70% of technology decisions now involve CFOs in some way.

   The gap between how CFOs perceive their finance organisation’s technology needs and how their employees use it can be wide because of change-averse staff. Nearly half of employees surveyed said such resistance to change is a barrier to achieving transformational and organisational success according to a recent survey. CFOs must communicate the benefits of automating repetitive financial tasks such as reporting and account reconciliation, and educate their people on how it can free up more time for more valuable work.

8. Managing taxes

   Tax is a major part of the CFO role since it directly impacts cash flow and long-term financial strategy. In APAC, different tax regulations on value-added tax (VAT) and goods and services tax (GST) across regions make it essential for CFOs to stay ahead of regulatory changes and proactively optimise tax positions to minimise its impact on operations.

   CFOs should look into AI-powered analytics when doing scenario modelling exercises to ensure efficient tax planning. AI-driven tools can process vast amounts of data that help identify risks and forecast potential tax liabilities.

Grow Your Business With the Help of NetSuite ERP

NetSuite’s cloud-based ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications can help CFOs and their teams manage core financial processes and gain real-time visibility into operational and financial performance. The integrated suite of applications centralises and automates critical business functions such as finance, order management, supply chain, warehouse, and field services. The ERP platform also provides powerful data analytic tools powered by AI to support real-time decision making.

CFO Challenges FAQs

What does a CFO care about?

CFOs’ main responsibilities are to help ensure their organisation’s financial health by supporting its short- and long-term goals while mitigating a range of risks.

What are the challenges CFOs face?

The challenges keeping most CFOs up at night are helping drive company growth, hiring and keeping talented people, mitigating risks, complying with regulations, making the best use of data, and automating for efficiency.

What is the role of a CFO in 2025?

Traditionally, the role of the CFO revolved around ensuring the financial stability of the company, complying with regulations, and mitigating risks. A CFO in 2025 will also need to collaborate with other senior executives across the business to align on strategic goals, as well as embrace new sources of data and emerging technology to improve financial forecasting, decision-making, and overall business efficiency.