From high interest rates to liquidity struggles, today’s organizations are juggling a complex environment of market, credit and operational risks — and a successful balancing act not only requires top talent in this area, but a close, trusted working relationship between key C-suite players.

The relationship between executives like the chief risk officer, chief technology officer and CFO “has to be a really collaborative dynamic,” said Ben Hodzic, managing director for global talent search firm Selby Jennings.

While historically, there may not have been much overlap, “I think there's a lot more overlap these days because of how important technology really is in everything that we do,” he said, whether that’s cash flow, accounting or payroll.

Getting on the same risk page

Risk management has always been a top priority for finance leaders — looking at CFOs in the finance industry, for example, their number one goal is to protect their organizations’ cash and assets. Proper risk management is “absolutely critical in making sure that objective takes place,” Hodzic said.

“I think the CFO role, and the risk management [role] really is almost one in the same in so many aspects,” Hodzic said in an interview. Ultimately, the CFO is the one who “really guides the parameters risk managers play within,” he said.

In order to properly set those parameters and to keep risk management processes running smoothly, working closely with their CTO and CRO is a must, however.

“There's going to have to be an increasing need for those three functions especially to be on the same page with everything and understand what everyone's driving and how they can all kind of play to each other's strengths,” Hodzic said.

The three functions are closely linked; the CTO is going to be the executive spearheading what technologies the company is investing in or how much money should be spent on data sets, and, “ultimately, that has to have some direction from the CFO who manages the cash flow, the balance sheet and the assets,” Hodzic said by way of example.

“Then I think on the risk side, it's working with the risk managers to understand, what are the parameters of risk that the company can stomach and wants to adhere to, and how do we make sure all of the investment decisions we're making are within that framework?” he said.

Adding value  

The need to work collaboratively across these three functions is only growing as emerging technologies seep further into key processes such as forecasting.

Selby Jennings, for example, is seeing an uptick in demand for treasury talent that comes equipped with data skills.

Treasury sits within finance, and “it’s very much the same language the CFOs speak, but there's been a lot of appetite for Treasury engineers and Treasury folks that actually come from a software background,” Hodzic said — leaving executives competing to retain talent in a small pool of potential candidates.

The need for such skills comes as executive leaders and board members identified a lack of talent overall as a key barrier to growth at their organizations, according to a recent survey by consulting management company Protiviti. Following talent, respondents identified access to capital and liquidity, new and emerging technologies, and central bank monetary policy as top concerns.

As well as new technologies, the high rate environment has also shifted what organizations want out of their risk management talent and processes; the high rate environment has “created a very different dynamic in the market, that a market risk professional would be able to assess and understand and then use to implement into a forward looking model or a forward looking investment strategy,” Hodzic said. “So we've seen a pretty good amount of hiring taking place in that space.”

For executives that want to retain risk talent given such shifts, it’s important to identify the individuals “that have a track record of adding value,” he said.

Looking at the banking side, for example, new capital requirements or regulations crop up with regularity, and for executives seeking new talent, “it's really important to look for folks that have migrated that change somewhere else and have been able to almost be agile and adaptive through new policy implementations or new developments,” Hodzic said.