
2023 FutureCFO Malaysia Conference
- 14 June 2023
- 9:00am - 5:30pm (MYT)
- Grand Millennium Hotel KL
EVENT OVERVIEW
The Malaysian economy registered a stronger growth of 14.2% in the third quarter of 2022. According to RAM Rating Services’ Head of Economic Research, Woon Khai Jhek, Malaysia’s stellar growth in 2022 should provide a sturdy base for growth in a challenging 2023, albeit a slower one. With the imminent threat of a global recession, Malaysia’s economy will inevitably face downside risks in 2023. Further escalation of geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, labour shortages and political uncertainty on the domestic front could also add pressure to 2023’s growth for the country.
However, even as economic uncertainties and headwinds are expected to intensify in 2023, there are opportunities to look forward to and the country’s growth is expected to resume after a mild downturn in 2023. Furthermore, with the new government elected during the 2022 General Election (GE 15), Malaysia’s federal budget for 2023 will be revised and re-tabled, which will impact the economy and businesses.
The macroeconomic uncertainty and on-going disruptions are continuing to drive finance leaders to accelerate technology adoption. In the race to innovate, automate and transform, and against the continuing uncertainty, how should finance leaders in Malaysia prioritise the many urgencies on the roadmap of growth and recovery?
Themed “Making Finance a Better Strategic Partner to Business”, FutureCFO Conference 2023 seeks to bring to the fore strategies, process transformation and technology innovations that aim to do just that – make finance, and the CFO, an even better strategic partner to business. Taking place on 14 June 2023, the 3rd Annual FutureCFO Malaysia Conference will gather over 120 top-tier finance professionals from multiple industries in Malaysia. This by-invitation senior finance executive gathering will address the business risks and opportunities, CFO’s top action plans to stay agile and drive business forward amidst continuing uncertainty and new challenges as well as strategies to confront challenges facing finance function post-digitalisation.
At this year’s in-person event, we will bring together some of the leading minds in finance in the country to solve real-world business problems today and seek to present use cases to answer critical challenges facing the various finance functions such as:
- Managing the margin pressures in an inflationary environment
- Making FP&A more predictive and agile
- Automation to drive down cost
- Narrowing the financial close and aiming to make it touch-less
- Closing the talent hole and managing the AI generation
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
CFOs, MDs, VPs, Directors, Heads, GMs, and Senior Managers, involved in:
- Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
- Strategic Planning & Forecasting
- Costing & Budgeting
- Treasury Operations
- Project Financing
- Accounting and Reporting
- Merger & Acquisition (M&A)
- Investment / Portfolio Management
- Auditing & Internal Control
- Tax Governance
- Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
- Statutory & Regulatory Reporting
- Fiscal Policy Planning
- Financial Technology Solutions
WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND
The FutureCFO Conference aims to give CFOs, who also act as their company’s strategic business partner and catalyst, insights on ensuring corporate growth and successfully mitigating risks and challenges amidst the current economic and political uncertainties in their countries. The conference will also address strategies and best practices on how CFOs can reimagine finance functions and their organizations to survive and thrive in today’s fast-paced and digitally driven landscape.
This by-invitation only one-day event will gather over 120 senior finance leaders from multiple industries and offers the best opportunity to hear from the industry’s leading professionals, contribute questions from the floor, engage in incisive panel discussions that discuss real-life business cases, updates and strategies to meet the most pertinent challenges facing the finance function in 2020.
High-Level Industry Speakers
We gather 20+ industry speakers and experts from leading organizations for keynote presentations and incisive discussions so you can tap on their invaluable insights and best practices important to your finance function management and transformation.
Interactive Discussions
Be part of our interactive panel discussions that address the current hot topics, share ideas and experiences and get the answers to your pressing questions from prominent finance leaders on stage.
Networking Opportunities
Meet new business partners, engage and forge new connections with fellow finance and treasury leaders in the region, solution providers and many more at our event through luncheons, coffee breaks, one-to-one meetings and informal introductions.
Targeted In-Depth Sessions
8 hours of learning and networking opportunities packed into 10 in depth sessions. Listen to corporate-driven best practices and case studies sharing that are targeted to your profession through the personalized country-specific conferences we crafted for you - FutureCFO Conferences.
AGENDA
09:00
CHAIRMAN’S WELCOME REMARKS
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
09:05
FIRESIDE CHAT I: Continuing the Pace of Change: Unlocking Growth Opportunities and Tackling Challenges in 2023
The confluence of rising inflation and interest rate, tensions in geopolitical, regulatory changes, energy security, foreign exchange volatility, supply chain disruptions as well as climate change risk had reshaped CFO’s responsibilities in magnitudes. With things are changing rapidly locally and globally, exacerbated by slowing growth, planning for 2023 is certainly not an easy task for finance leaders in Malaysia. CFOs are required to be agile and flexible to capture new opportunities especially with the potential shrinking in customer demands as the world is likely or already in recession.
- Doing more with less in the growing volatility, uncertainty complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) environment
- Managing the margin pressures: How can finance leaders help accelerate recovery?
- Areas to raise and cut spending in 2023
- Ensuring long-term sustainable growth post-pandemic
- Project financing in 2023: Maximising access to capital amidst potential storm
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Jayanta Chatterjee, Head of Finance, METROD MALAYSIA
09:30
KEYNOTE I: Driving Organisational Speed and Agility with Self-Service Data and Analytics
A Gartner survey reveals that companies that invest in productivity and efficiency to fight inflation will outperform those who just increase prices. Instead of just passing on inflationary costs to customers, improving efficiency, productivity and quick data-driven decision making is a better bet for the business’s long-term competitive advantage.
- Leveraging big data and self-service analytics to drive innovation, higher productivity, growth and revenue
- Empowering finance teams to take on the leadership role with deep, trustworthy and data-driven insights while reducing risks and costs
- Enabling finance teams to turn data into insights independently with self-service data analytics capabilities
- Creating secure collaboration for quick data-driven decision making with autonomous, self-service, cloud data warehouse
- Ensuring data governance and security in self-service data analytics
Senior representative, JEDOX
09:55
PANEL DISCUSSION I: Digital Transformation and Reality Gap: What’s Next Post Digitalisation?
Digital transformation has saved many businesses when the pandemic struck. However, in reality, almost no organisation has finished their digitalisation journey. While most organisations are now more digitally mature and they are in the better position to thrive in the post-pandemic era, what businesses are asking for constantly evolves.
- Advancing digitalisation initiatives vs. traditional work environments
- Capitalising on digitalisation investment to stay resilient, flexible and efficient amidst escalating costs
- Keeping up with digital acceleration while ensuring employee’s continuous engagement
- Lesson learnt from 2022: What can be done differently in 2023?
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Joanne Rodrigues, Group CFO, AFFIN BANK BERHAD
Gurmeet Singh, CFO, South East Asia, AIRASIA
Senior representative, GRAB
Colleen Wong, Financial Controller, HELP UNIVERSITY
10:30
KEYNOTE II: CFO Playbook for Debt Management on 2023 Budget
- The weight of debt on CFO’s 2023 budget
- Debt refinancing vs. restructuring to strengthen company’s financial outlook in 2023
- Maintaining strong balance sheet and tight watch on credit risks and liquidity against imminent recession
Senior representative, CBS CONSULTING
10:55
MORNING COFFEE BREAK & NETWORKING
11:25
KEYNOTE III: Moving beyond Automation and into Autonomous Finance
Finance functions want to close faster, cheaper and with fewer errors. According to recent Gartner’s survey, 55% of finance functions aim for a touchless close by 2025.
The pandemic, including social and operational restrictions it imposed, rising needs of the stakeholders and macro-economic pressures are creating impetus for a touchless close. However, to achieve a touchless close, it will require finance leaders and controllers to move beyond automation and into autonomous finance.
- Shifting from process automation to intelligent automation
- Autonomous finance for augmented real-time insights, effortless compliance and greater flexibility in financial strategy
- Narrowing the financial close and aiming to make it touch-less
- Accelerating back-and-middle-office finance operations to ensure digital maturity
- Operationalising AI to move an autonomous, touchless financial close
Senior representative, ANAPLAN
11:50
PANEL DISCUSSION II: More than Turnover and Profits: Making Finance a Better Strategic Partner to Business
This session will unfold the new expectations for finance role as strategic business partner and how to transform finance function into strategic business-partner, capable of providing critical supports and insights to deliver sustained profitable growth and seamless operational excellence.
- Rewriting and solidifying finance function’s roles as the most trusted strategic business partner to capture new opportunities
- Evolving transactional finance to value creation and become enterprise’s critical enablers
- Up-skilling the finance team to leverage fully on digitalisation and better partner the business
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Adrine Ong, Finance Director, CLASSIC FINE FOODS MALAYSIA
Nora Junita Hussaini, CFO, MYSJ
Lee Pei Lu, Finance Director, WARNER MUSIC MALAYSIA
Senior representative, WOLTERS KLUWER
12:25
KEYNOTE IV: Imagining the Finance of the Future – A Case Study from Roche Malaysia
Finance functions must evolve to keep pace with the constantly changing business environment. As the company’s custodian of performance which steers activities and resource allocation at the enterprise level to achieve strategic objectives, finance function needs to define and execute a vision that inspires employees to elevate their performance; while enabling the organisation to set clear targets for its near-term evolution.
This session will present hypotheses for what a successful, value-adding finance function would look like in ten years. The six hypotheses for the future of finance
- Challenges in realising the vision of finance of the future
- Closing the gap between the status quo and the vision of the future
- Implementing the finance of the future: How companies should think about evolving to ensure they are well positioned going forward
- Roche Malaysia’s case study in realising the future of the finance function
Maximilian Herz, Finance and Partnering Director (CFO), ROCHE PHARMA MALAYSIA
12:50
NETWORKING LUNCH
13:50
KEYNOTE IV: CFO’s Purpose-Driven Leadership: Overcoming Trust Deficit Challenges and Strengthening Business Confidence & Market Reputation
Reputation risk is the potential loss of financial and social capitals that will eventually result in declining share price due to damage to an organisation’s reputation in the market. Any breach of trust often sends a signal that a more widespread malpractice may yet be uncovered. This session discusses strategies for CFOs in building sustainable corporate trust cultures to preserve consumer and long-term investors’ loyalty.
- Evaluating rising trust deficit and its impact on brand and market reputation
- CFO’s role in promoting a culture of fairness and prompt reporting of unethical practices
- Establishing good corporate governance from the CFO’s seat
- CFO’s guide in enforcing Corporate Liability Act
- Building trust – With tighter regulatory discipline or market discipline?
Chari TVT, Board Member & Chairman of the Board Governance and Risk Committee, UEM SUNRISE BERHAD
14:15
PANEL DISCUSSION III: Ensuring Financial Resiliency in the Face of a Potential Economic Downturn
Pritika Bhattacharjee, Vice President, Research in the Gartner Finance Practice says: “CFOs are telling their FP&A leaders that they need to improve flexibility of budgeting and forecasting, enable faster capital reallocation, and updated financial models to reflect rapidly changing business realities”.
With economic activity slowing down, optimising sales is often a challenge for many businesses. As businesses enter into low-growth and high-cost setting, securing collections has become difficult and cash flows get increasingly difficult to predict.
- Improving working capital and cash flow amidst high interest rate and squeezing credit to ensure business continuity
- Transforming cost structures to operate efficiently and balance fluctuations
- Creating more agile, scalable and flexible FP&A
- Optimising business decisions and cash flows with AI/ML-driven scenario planning
- Rolling forecasts and scenario planning to protect free cash flows and reserves
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
David Chua, APAC Director (Controllership and Planning & Forecasting), HALEON
Suraya Mahmud, Head, Group Finance Business Partner and Corporate Reporting, MALAYSIA AIRLINES
14:50
FIRESIDE CHAT II: Monetising ESG: Measuring the Value of ESG Investments
Today’s CFOs are often tasked to ensure their organisation’s sustainable initiatives successful. With the myriad and speed of ESG developments, calculating the value of the return of ESG initiatives is difficult.
- Stepping up enterprise’s ESG initiatives in a digital world
- Managing the ESG’s values and risks as regulations and standards change
- Tying the benefits of ESG back to the business’ financial returns and income statement
- Leveraging technology to improve productivity, customer experience and intertwine these with ESG strategy
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Senior representative, ESKER
15:15
AFTERNOON COFFEE BREAK & NETWORKING
15:45
FIRESIDE CHAT III: FinOps for CFOs: Taking Control of Cloud Costs
When the pandemic hit, many organisations pushed themselves to rapidly modernise their applications and platforms and in the pursuit of cost savings, many aimed to become ‘cloud-first’ enterprises. However, as businesses squaring up this year, organisations may overspend on their cloud technology and struggle to keep the cloud costs under control. This session will delve into FinOps or cloud financial operations, an approach that let organisations realise the maximum business value from using the cloud by making data-driven spending decisions.
- FinOps in the top of CFO agenda 2023
- Developing structure and strategy for cloud financial management
- Establishing FinOps for internal finance, IT and other teams across the organisation
- Metrics that support cloud cost optimisation
- Cloud cost saving methods and mistakes to avoid
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Interviewer:
Paul Puspanathan, Director Supply Chain Global Finance Operation, BAKER HUGHES
16:10
KEYNOTE IV: Tax Updates for 2023: What’s Important for CFO and More
The rapidly changing tax environment presents both new challenges and opportunities for CFOs. This session will address the latest updates on taxation regulations in Malaysia and how this will impact finance leaders in creating appropriate tax defense strategy and improve tax compliance for better risk management approach.
- Adapting to the new set of rulings: The latest tax measures and regulations for businesses in Malaysia
- Getting ready for the implementation of Global Minimum Corporate Tax: Key considerations and implications for CFOs
- Addressing transfer pricing challenges in 2023
- How to stay compliant: Common tax issues for finance leaders in Malaysia and how to avoid pitfalls
16:35
PANEL DISCUSSION IV: The New Breed of Finance Team: How to Start a Team of Experts for the Future Finance
Gartner predicts that by 2024, 30% of organisation will implement and use AI-enabled processes within their financial management infrastructure. Also, 40% of organisations in service-oriented sectors will consolidate their core financial and operational solutions in a single ERP system.
To prepare for the future of finance and grow into an AI-driven finance function, CFOs will need to assemble a squad of finance employees that speak data and even write in Python.
- The future of AI-driven finance organisation
- Determining the needs and skills beyond accounting
- Developing AI and data competency in the finance team
- Finding and retaining digital skills: How to attract business-savvy and tech-savvy finance talents?
- Managing the new breed of finance talents in Malaysia
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Bui Nguyen Hoang, VP Finance and Commercial, NS BLUESCOPE MALAYSIA
Rafidah Jumal, VP FO Controller, SHELL BUSINESS SERVICE CENTRE
Dajmarehan Zolkipli, CFO, TUNE TALK
17:05
CHAIRMAN’S CLOSING REMARKS
17:15
END OF CONFERENCE
SPEAKERS
Board Member & Chairman of the Board Governance and Risk Committee
UEM SUNRISE BERHAD
APAC Director (Controllership and Planning & Forecasting)
HALEON
Speaking Opportunities:
- Christine Tjahjadi
- +60 10 219 2350
- [email protected]
WHY SPONSOR
We will help you GENERATE quality business leads.
We will help you INCREASE your regional profile.
We will help you CREATE new business opportunities.
- Get cost-effective marketing exposure and branding to your target audience, culminating in face-to-face meetings with your prospects.
- Position and profile yourself as an industry leader.
- Increase your brand recognition.
- Create new partnerships and alliances.
- Develop relationships through new virtual networking opportunities.
- Showcase new products and services to a targeted audience of decision makers.
- Get direct and exclusive access to Key decision-makers
Sponsorship Opportunities:
- Clarise Goh
- +65 9387 8878
- [email protected]
- Nigel Standley
- +65 9176 6363
- [email protected]
PAST SPONSORS & PARTNERS
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