Hosted by CFO Magazine
The CFO Playbook
Is Being Rewritten
Five themes every finance leader should take from the Perth CFO Symposium 2026.
Thursday 23 July 2026 · Perth Pan Pacific · Hosted by CFO Magazine
One day. Fourteen sessions. Five themes for FY27.
Keynotes, panels and case studies, distilled into what matters next for finance leaders.
Moving past the hype
From Trintech's Georgina Woolf to futurist Mark Pesce, FloQast and Weel: the hype cycle has outpaced what most finance functions are ready to use.
Controls, audit trails and review — what finance already does — are exactly what make AI agents safe to deploy.
Repeatable workflows: month-end close, reconciliations, exception handling — not a replacement for judgement.
Measure ROI in real numbers. Never trade control or audit compliance for speed.
“The cost of intelligence is collapsing.” What was scarce and expensive is now cheap — but only pays off once process and data are solid.A throughline across the day's AI sessions
Becide: one answer already in market
Dilip Kherajani asked the room how many still spend 48+ hours on a single management pack. His answer: Becide — an AI layer from Business Avengers Intelligence Labs, built for finance, not a general AI tool in a finance skin.
- Board-ready P&L, budget variance and segment views — built around a business’s own KPIs.
- A finance assistant answering in seconds with citations, plus AI voice and chat agents for tasks like receivables — always disclosed as AI.
- Client-owned encryption key, hosted in Sydney, read-only access, every output reviewed by the client with a full audit trail.
We are probably Australia’s first AI outsourcing business, where we are business partnering with the CFO and helping them embed AI into their finance function.Dilip Kherajani, Founder & CFO, Business Avengers
A strategic lever, not just a cost play
Two live case studies — True Protein and 4CRisk — with Dilip Kherajani, Lachlan Cornwell (CFOO) and Amy Knoll (Head of Finance) of True Protein, and 4CRisk's Ida Handy (GM).
Outsourcing only works once data is unified and processes are clear — a partner inherits whatever state the function is already in.
They’re very much an extension of our team, not a vendor relationship.Lachlan Cornwell, CFOO, True Protein
- A service line to manage
- Provider systems and process
- Measured on tickets closed
- Generic savings estimates
- An extension of the internal team
- Inside client systems: NetSuite, Slack, OneDrive
- Weekly cadences, integration measured
- Real numbers: close times, error rates, headcount
Finance headcount did not scale with revenue growth.
Dedicated infrastructure, client-issued credentials rather than provider systems, and no local retention of client data.
There is practically zero nexus between Business Avengers and the client.Dilip Kherajani, Founder & CFO, Business Avengers
Treat data and process readiness as a precondition. Ask partners how they measure integration — close times, error rates, headcount trend — not just delivery.
Beyond the numbers
Several sessions pushed CFOs to look past technical competence toward a broader leadership remit.
Trent Fuller — three-time CFO, now CEO — turned a transient, largely unskilled workforce into an engaged one, with CFOs setting goals and reinforcing accountability.
CFO coach Alena Bennett: finance leaders must actively support capital-raising and commercial conversations, not just report on them.
Andrew Jepson’s keynote framed partnering as a teachable skill — one Google and NASA rank highly when hiring technical experts, yet few in finance develop.
CFOs need to become the second best salesperson in their organisation.Alena Bennett, CFO coach
A borderless, AI-accelerated world
Eftsure's Mary Italiano: fraud no longer respects a firewall or a border, and most finance leaders lack a framework for securing international payment workflows against AI-driven impersonation.
Fraud is faster, harder-hitting and cross-border — accelerated by AI.
Dedicated access infrastructure and credential-based entry, not shared provider systems.
Full audit trails and reviewed outputs — speed never at the cost of control.
A reference point for auditing third-party and payment risk.
The backdrop for FY27
Economist Stephen Koukoulas closed the day on FY27: interest rates, inflation and global influences shaping Australia amid ongoing tech disruption.
Confident planning needs a clear macro read and a finance function fast enough to act on it.
The CFO role has changed more in the last five years than in the previous twenty — and the pace is accelerating.
Across all five themes, one shift: the CFO’s job is moving from producing accurate numbers to building a function that produces them fast, securely, and with capacity left to use them.
- 01AI pays off on repeatable workflows — real ROI, never at the cost of control.
- 02Outsourcing is integration, not vendor management: ask for close times and error rates.
- 03Leadership means commercial capability and partnering — trainable skills.
- 04Security is an operating model: dedicated access, credentials, audit trails.
- 05FY27 needs a macro read and a finance function fast enough to act on it.
- 06None of it works without clean, well-governed data underneath.