2023 FutureCFO Philippines Conference
- 23 March 2023
- 9:00am – 5:00pm (PHT)
- Raffles Makati
EVENT OVERVIEW
According to IMF, the Philippines is expected to remain as one of the strongest performers in the region in 2023 although it may deal with adversities arising from a looming global economic slowdown. The ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) reported that the Philippines’ economy is also expected to expand at a faster pace compared to the ASEAN region, which growth for next year is projected to be at 4.9%.
Due to heightened energy crisis, tightening monetary policy, sharper slowdown in China, the United States and Europe, more Covid-19 variants and escalating geopolitical tensions, economies are projected to be weaker next year. Given the current developments, how should finance leaders in the Philippines be prepared to face intensifying fears of recession in 2023?
In addition, 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 prioritise the many priorities on the roadmap of growth and recovery?
Themed “Forging Strategic Partnerships with Business 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 23 March 2023, the 3rd Annual FutureCFO Philippines Conference will gather over 120 senior finance professionals from multiple industries in the Philippines. This event will delve into addressing the latest macroeconomic updates, business risks and opportunities, CFO’s top action plans to drive change and recover growth in the Philippines. This by-invitation executive gathering will also discuss strategies to confront challenges facing finance function post-digitalisation, stay agile and drive business forward amidst continuing uncertainty and new challenges.
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
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
PANEL DISCUSSION 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 the Philippines. 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
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Rangnath Deshpande, CFO ASEAN, DXC TECHNOLOGY
Amandeep Singh, CFO, PROCTER & GAMBLE PHILIPPINES
Dr. Joselito Diga, SVP for Finance and Group CFO, UNITED LABORATORIES
09:45
KEYNOTE I: Moving beyond Automation and into Autonomous Finance: A Use Case from The Medical City
The pandemic has brought a world of changes, especially in the healthcare industry. Social and operational restrictions, rising needs of the stakeholders and macro-economic pressures are creating impetus for a more streamlined and efficient approach. 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. This session will discuss how The Medical City is spearheading their journey from automation into Autonomous finance by:
- Eliminating errors and discrepancies while upholding compliance
- Augmenting real-time insights for simulating decision scenarios
- Narrowing the financial close and cutting their budget process from days to minutes
- Accelerating back-and-middle-office finance operations to ensure digital maturity
- Operationalising AI to move into an autonomous, touchless financial close
Dean Noel M. Fabella, AVP & Head of Corporate Planning and Analysis, THE MEDICAL CITY
10:10
PANEL DISCUSSION II: 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:
Sajjeed Aslam, Regional Lead Public Affairs – APAC, ACCA
Grace Vera Cruz, Managing Director, Philippines, GRAB
Eliana Nieto Sanchez, CFO, HOLCIM PHILIPPINES
Gaurav Dass, Country CFO, NOVARTIS HEALTHCARE PHILIPPINES
10:50
MORNING COFFEE BREAK & NETWORKING
11:20
KEYNOTE II: Fighting Cyber Risk from the CFO’s Seat
The permanence of the hybrid work model and growing use of cloud have increased the occurrence and severity of cyber attacks and fraudulent activity, thus adding a new dimension to CFO’s overall risk and fraud management strategy within their organisation. In this session, we will address:
- The rise of ransomware and the cyber risk landscape moving forward
- Improving company policies, procedures and controls to overcome vulnerabilities and bad actors
- A risk management framework for achieving cyber resilience
- Investing in cyber security to prevent fraud and protect sensitive data
- The role of insurance in upskilling cyber security
Andrew Mahony, Head of Cyber and FI Risk – Asia, AON
11:45
PANEL DISCUSSION III: 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:
Jared Valarao, CFO, PHILIPPINES AIRASIA
Jasmine Teo, General Manager, ASEAN, CCH Tagetik, WOLTERS KLUWER
Mara Sarmiento, CFO, WWF PHILIPPINES
12:25
NETWORKING LUNCH
13:30
Chairman’s Welcome Remarks
Elmer Sarmiento, SAVP – Finance & Accounting Operations, PERSONIV
13:35
KEYNOTE III: CFO 3.0 – Steering the Organization to a more Agile, Data-Driven & Tech Enabled Future
- Evolution of finance leader role from being a business supporter to a value architect
- Leveraging technology and fostering automation to support business decision
- Incorporating technology infrastructure, policies and practices for a comprehensive financial insight
- Ensuring accuracy, availability and consistency of data for modern CFOs
Niral Damani, CFO, SODEXO BENEFITS & REWARDS SERVICES PHILIPPINES
14.00
KEYNOTE IV: Driving Value by Overcoming Execution Challenges of Mission-Critical Projects
RGP’s research reveals that with enlightened approaches to project leadership, companies that orchestrate organizationally diverse and hybrid teams have outperformed the competition since the pandemic began. These companies are poised for even greater success as the ability to execute key operational changes becomes as important as crafting strategies for those changes. This finding is in line with a Gartner survey that reveals that companies that invest in productivity and efficiency to fight inflation will outperform those who just increase prices.
Improving efficiency, productivity and quick data-driven decision making is a better bet for the business’s long-term competitive advantage. This session explores how CFOs are able to drive value by delivering successfully these projects to improve efficiency, productivity and quick data-driven decision making with execution excellence and agility.
- The increasing number of mission-critical projects since the pandemic began as corporations race to keep up with technological advances
- Key success factors in meeting or exceeding organisation’s goals in achieving mission-critical projects
- People management for managing mission-critical projects
Christiaan van Es, Regional Vice President – Revenue Southeast Asia & India, RGP
14:25
PANEL DISCUSSION IV: 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:
Mary Joy P. Tacay, CFO, DAVAO DOCTORS HOSPITAL
Shomit Goel, Head of Commercial Finance, HOME CREDIT PHILIPPINES
Jacob Francis Bautista, Senior Director Finance, JONES LANG LASALLE SSC (PHILIPPINES), INC.
15:05
AFTERNOON COFFEE BREAK & NETWORKING
15:35
PANEL DISCUSSION V: 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 the Philippines
Moderator:
Elmer Sarmiento, SAVP – Finance & Accounting Operations, PERSONIV
Panelists:
Genesis Santiago, Finance and Info Systems Director, FONTERRA
Bikash Jain, Finance Director, GSK PHILIPPINES
Anthony Nool, Head of Controlling, Global Business Solutions, HENKEL ASIA PACIFIC SERVICE CENTER PHILIPPINES
Atty. Lani Billena, Vice President, Controlling, Shared Services Head, SM RETAIL
16:15
CHAIRMAN’S CLOSING REMARKS
16:30
END OF CONFERENCE
SPEAKERS
Group Editor-in-Chief
CXOCIETY
CFO
PROCTER & GAMBLE PHILIPPINES
Head of Cyber and FI Risk – Asia
AON
Head of Controlling, Global Business Solutions
HENKEL ASIA PACIFIC SERVICE CENTER PHILIPPINES
Vice President, Controlling, Shared Services Head
SM RETAIL
Finance Director
GSK PHILIPPINES
Regional Vice President – Revenue Southeast Asia & India
RGP
AVP & Head of Corporate Planning and Analysis
THE MEDICAL CITY
Senior Vice President for Finance and Group CFO
UNITED LABORATORIES
CFO
HOLCIM PHILIPPINES
SAVP/Associate Program Manager - Head of Finance & Accounting Operations
PERSONIV
Country CFO
NOVARTIS HEALTHCARE PHILIPPINES
Finance and Info Systems Director
FONTERRA
Managing Director, Philippines
GRAB
Senior Director Finance
JONES LANG LASALLE SSC (PHILIPPINES), INC.
CFO
PHILIPPINES AIRASIA
General Manager, ASEAN, CCH Tagetik
WOLTERS KLUWER
CFO
WWF PHILIPPINES
CFO
DAVAO DOCTORS HOSPITAL
Chief Finance Officer
PLUXEE PHILIPPINES
CFO ASEAN
DXC TECHNOLOGY
Regional Lead Public Affairs – APAC
ACCA
Head of Commercial Finance
HOME CREDIT PHILIPPINES
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.
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- Increase your brand recognition.
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- Develop relationships through new virtual networking opportunities.
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- Get direct and exclusive access to Key decision-makers
Sponsorship Opportunities:
- Clarise Goh
- +65 9387 8878
- [email protected]
- Nigel Standley
- +65 9176 6363
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