Finance professionals should master coding?

• As the finance industry undergoes a mind-blowing transformation, professionals in this field must adapt to new technologies and methodologies.
• Sure, ChatGPT won’t be snagging your job, but here’s the kicker: the tech-savvy professionals in your domain are already leveraging AI for efficiency.
• At The Finance Story Bangalore event, Dipanjan Basu, Co-founder and Partner at Fireside Ventures, Saradha Govindarajan, CFO of Veranda Learning, Sriram Iyer, former MD at Accenture India, and Raghav Swaminathan, CFO at Wipro Enterprises dived deep into the rapid changes reshaping finance roles.

Importance of Python in finance

Dipanjan highlights the critical need for programming skills among finance professionals.

With the advent of tools like ChatGPT, many traditional finance tasks are being automated, making programming an essential skill.

Saradha recalls her experience of forming business finance teams composed of engineers with MBAs from top business schools.

She mentions, “In the last two companies that I worked with, I formed a business finance team of engineers who had done their MBA from IIM or a top business school. We also sponsored them for programs to learn Python, and we built our own BI tools. That’s very much the requirement today. Without that, I don’t think a finance team can function.”

Role of data analytics in finance

Dipanjan reflects on his CFO days at Myntra.

He notes that except for the core controllership team, the business finance side was primarily staffed by individuals from engineering backgrounds.

This shift was driven by the need for advanced data analytics, which could not be managed using traditional tools like Excel.

The role of business finance in our e-commerce company revolved primarily around analytics and data.

The sheer volume of information they dealt with was far beyond what could be managed in Excel.

Consequently, they had to run complex queries and write code to derive meaningful insights from that massive dataset.

Also read: This 28-year-old Big 4 Risk Advisory professional shares how he is adapting to AI & Automation

future of Planning and Analysis

Sriram envisions a future where finance roles are divided into planning and analysis.

He predicts that the planning process, traditionally a lengthy exercise, will become more streamlined, relying heavily on historical data and industry cycles.

This shift will significantly reduce the time spent on planning, potentially rendering some roles obsolete.

The focus will shift towards analysis, which, while becoming a standard requirement, will demand a deeper understanding of business dynamics.

Sriram adds, “I see the planning process coming down from a month and a half to maybe 4-5 days.”

Leaner core finance workforce

Sriram foresees a significant reduction in the number of finance roles due to automation and transformation efforts.

The trend towards creating pools of common resources and standardizing skills across roles will lead to a leaner finance workforce.

Also read: Germany is facing a shortage of finance talent: Here is why they are looking at India to fill the gap

Wrapping up

The finance industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by automation, data analytics, and the need for new skills.

As automation continues to reshape finance roles, professionals must adapt by diversifying their skills and focusing on broader business functions.

And as Sriram says, “You won’t be the same finance professional you were a year ago or five years ago.

You’ll need to be more like a business development (BD) professional who understands finance better than a traditional BD professional.”