Why a CFO’s top skill isn’t capital allocation—it’s influence

Good morning. Happy New Year! Today’s CFOs are expected not only to own the numbers, but also to act as core strategists, digital leaders, and enterprise change agents.

I recently talked about this topic with Robinhood CFO Jason Warnick and his successor, Shiv Verma, SVP of finance and strategy and treasurer. At Robinhood, the Menlo Park, Calif.–based fintech and asset trading platform, Verma is stepping into the top finance job. Warnick is retiring and moving into an advisory role this quarter, remaining with the company until Sept. 1.

Earlier in his career, Warnick—who joined Robinhood in late 2018 after two decades at Amazon—said he was once asked by a mentor, “What do you think is the most important aspect of a CFO’s job?” Warnick answered, “capital allocation.”

“That’s important; that’s what drives future returns for the company,” he recalls his mentor telling him. “But you don’t get to allocate the capital yourself.” The most important skill a CFO has, Warnick said, is influencing the ultimate decision-maker—the CEO. “So our job is to bring data and finance into the discussion and influence the outcome,” he said.

Verma has spent a lot of time with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, the board, and cross-functional leaders in engineering, legal, compliance, and risk, focusing on the decisions that matter most for Robinhood’s long-term trajectory, he said.

While both roles are critical on their own, the quality of the CEO–CFO partnership often matters more than what either leader can achieve individually. CEOs are leaning on their CFOs as strategic thought partners as businesses confront rapid technological change and evolving stakeholder expectations. In that context, finance chiefs provide enterprise-wide visibility and help turn ambiguity into concrete scenarios, trade-offs, and decisions.

Verma, now Tenev’s strategic partner, describes Robinhood’s past seven years as a compressed Silicon Valley life cycle: early build-out, pandemic-era hypergrowth, the GameStop frenzy, and an IPO, followed by a sharp selloff. In 2022, Robinhood cut roughly 30% of its workforce and shifted to a general manager model intended to cut excessive management layers and give managers broader responsibility for their businesses. “We’ve come a long way,” Verma said, “to a very skilled public company.” In 2024, the company earned $2.95 billion in total net revenue and annual net income of $1.41 billion. In September, it joined the S&P 500.

Robinhood has also managed to create a model of corporate governance and succession planning. To find out how the company handled the CFO transition, you can read more here.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com