Big 4 => Strategic Finance/FP&A Role Possible?

Moving from Big 4 to FP&A role will be very easy. Not sure about this 'strategic finance' you speak of.

TheBlueCheese:

Moving from Big 4 to FP&A role will be very easy. Not sure about this 'strategic finance' you speak of.

+1

Without stats in front if me I'd actually guess that this would be the most common path for those starting in Audit.

FP&A role seem to be common among auditors but the more common path seems to be plain vanilla accounting positions (i.e. senior accountant, SEC reporting, fund accountant, etc.). To my understanding, FP&A roles are not easy for auditors to get but its very doable.

Corporate strategy groups will be hard to break into from audit. Those positions are likely more geared towards consultants. The type of work you want to do ("products or markets a company should pursue, capital budgeting decisions, strategic planning, real options valuation") is not the kind of work or thinking you do as an auditor.

The CFO role really varies by company. The reason some have a strong accounting background is because some CFO positions have a big SEC reporting component.

tl;dr: If your goal is to get into a strategy group, you likely won't be able to do it directly from audit. You'll need some other experiences (and an MBA may help you pivot to those experiences). If your goal is just normal FP&A, you can position yourself for that.

I speak solely from my personal experience, but I work in one of the positions that you're describing (NPV/IRR for future business decisions, scenario analysis/monte Carlo simulations, some monthly variance analysis but it is all analytical in understanding how mix of product sold impacted sales & profit, etc)

There are significantly less of these jobs then the standard accounting roles, and it can be difficult building a long term career in this department, as I'm being pushed to go back to an accounting role in my next job. That said, public accounting guys are highly sought after on the corporate side so i think the transition would be possible. Again just speaking from my experience with one company.

Lester Freamon:

Does FP&A do any forward looking analysis at all or is it still accounting oriented work? I get so confused as to what FP&A people actually do. Some people say that it's basically financial analysis (i.e. NPV/IRR analysis, capital budgeting, etc.) while others say that it's just more accounting work (i.e. variance analysis, month-end closing,etc.).

As far as what I mean by strategic finance, I know it's a very vague term, but basically, I want to be in a position where I am modeling out or trying to analyze the financial impacts of a decision a firm makes. For example, if I were to work for a telecom company, I'd want to do work where I'm trying to assess whether it makes sense to expand operations in an emerging market and put up some towers in those areas. This could involve either doing an NPV/IRR analysis on the potential cash flows the project would bring, doing a qualitative analysis on the country, assessing how real options (i.e. the ability to abandon the project after X years if it's not as successful as initially thought) could save us money, etc.

I'm strange in that I actually find looking at projects like this more interesting than assessing which businesses I could be a strategic buyer for (therefore, I'm not JUST gunning for corp dev jobs), but would FP&A involve any of what I mentioned above?

i have a 'strategic finance' role within my company's strategy group and i came from an audit background. def not easy getting in with audit experience so i consider myself lucky that i landed this. feel free to PM me with any specific questions you may have.

agree with the consensus above. varies by company, but where I work, that sort of strategic analysis OP is referring to is somewhat housed across both the FP&A (which also does weekly, monthly, quarterly variance and P&L reporting) and corp dev groups (reports to same head of group).

a lot of synergies across FP&A / corp dev groups as they often work together on non-M&A projects. well, even for in-house M&A, corp dev will need FP&A for accretion / dilution analyses (using operating model projections), cash flow forecasting, expense reporting (running target company's financials on the corporate budget), etc.

it's very possible to make the jump from big 4 audit to an fp&a role that has some strategy implications. most recruiters will push you towards accounting and financial reporting positions, but that shouldn't be a major barrier. in any case, the overwhelming majority of fp&a roles below the director level basically involve pushing paper. for that reason, don't pass up a "less-strategic" fp&a role at a great company for what seems like the perfect job at a lesser known company. At least not early in your career. At the end of the day, the first 10 years of your career in corporate finance should be focused on building your resume, getting good experience, and gaining the skills you will need for down the road. also, you will most likely have to bounce around within the corporate finance world to build the necessary skills to eventually become a successful vp/cfo. this might mean stints in fp&a, financial reporting, internal audit, treasury, etc. the goal is to become well rounded and see the business from different angles. good chance these jumps will be necessary to achieve a normal promotion schedule unless you want to delay a promotion for a few years to stay in your current group. just the way it works. my opinion, when jumping from the big 4 don't be upset if you land in an accounting and financial reporting role because if you are a solid performer and want to get to the fp&a side, any decent company will happily move you.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I have questions relating to this. I'm hoping to make the same move as the OP, but wanted to do it in another city (currently in the Southeast, hoping to move to either Seattle, Minneapolis, or Chicago in the future). I plan to do 3-5 years in Big 4, then I'm considering either doing a direct application on company websites, or going for an MBA to try and break from the accountant typecast. Realistically, how open are company's to hiring Big 4 auditors for fp&a positions, especially from different parts of the country? What would you say is the best way to make the transition, both for position and location?

i hate audit:

i have a 'strategic finance' role within my company's strategy group and i came from an audit background. def not easy getting in with audit experience so i consider myself lucky that i landed this. feel free to PM me with any specific questions you may have.

Thanks for you and everyone else for all the information. It sounds as though I'll have to both demonstrate a lot of finance acumen as well as potentially get an MBA to re-brand myself down the road. I actually did want to ask a followup but unfortunately, I don't have enough banana points or something like that to PM you.

As a general question, I was wondering if I might be able to get an executive MBA from a T15 school instead of going full-time? Even though I'd theoretically be making a "career change" going from accounting to finance, the two are very related and I'd mostly be using the MBA to prove that I'm not just a bean counter who can't think outside of GAAP/IFRS rules. Going full-time might not make sense given that I'm not necessarily looking to get into PE/HFs and would cost a lot of money, so would doing an executive MBA maybe help with making the switch?

i landed my role in fp&a straight from the big 4 through cold applying on the company's career portal. if you have a decent undergrad gpa than it's even more likley to have success doing this. i will say that if you are applying to non-traditional ex-big 4 jobs, then you stand less of a chance. in my opinion, fp&a jobs, even strategy oriented ones are fair game for big 4. don't be deterred if you don't hear back. sometimes companies have postings online but are only considering internal candidates. other times, they don't want people from public accounting and are specifically looking for people who have similar corporate finance experience. either way, the big 4 and a cpa on your resume will be enough to get you past the screening software and in front of the eyes of the recruiter.

as for applying to a different city, that will make things harder. SFAs and even managers are pretty easy to come by for the most part, so companies do not have an incentive to bring in people form different parts of the country. it's expensive, it's time consuming, and it's just harder than hiring a local candidate. not to say that it will make you an automatic ding, but it will make it tougher to get past the hiring manger and to the interview stage. if i were you, i would plan well ahead. try to transfer offices within the big 4 after your first year. if you want to work for amazon in seattle, get to your firm's seattle office, and then start applying once you are ready to bounce. obviously that is risky because if you don't have any luck getting into the jump employer of your choice than you are kinda s.o.l, but you can negate that by picking a city with multiple attractive companies.

Thanks for the response bird. I appreciate the honest feedback. Any opinion on using an MBA as a way to make the transition, particularly programs for the cities I listed? It's something I'm hoping to do eventually anyway.