12/22/2023

CFO Survey Hints at Cautious Optimism for 2024

CFOs are approaching the new year with a sense of optimism

Although regulatory developments, risk management, and digital acceleration are just as important as they were last year to CFOs, labor quality and monetary policy continue to be the top concerns of finance leaders.

According to Q4 data from Duke University Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, monetary policy and labor quality were equally concerning for CFO respondents, each getting a 12.5 percent share of mentions. Fewer CFOs chose cost pressures and inflation as their top concern, dropping it to third-most-mentioned.

However, CFOs are going into next year more optimistic about economic prospects than last quarter. On a scale of 100, the index for CFO optimism about the overall economy rose to 58, up from 56.2 from last quarter. Finance chiefs’ optimism about their own firm’s prospects remained higher than economic optimism, at 67.3, but that was down slightly from 67.8 in the third quarter.

Please select this link to read the complete article from CFO.