Fractional executives now represent a significant structural change in the CFO job market, allowing professionals to balance multiple clients simultaneously. That is the view of interim management provider Russam, which suggests that experienced finance professionals are increasingly attracted to combining multiple assignments, sectors and challenges rather than committing to a single organisation.
This is reflected in the Institute of Interim Management’s 2026 annual survey, which for the first time included a question about how many of its members were undertaking fractional work. A quarter of the respondents’ assignments were fractional, which reinforces the arrival of this style of operation in practice.
“Most small-to-medium-sized businesses require three-to-five days a month of CFO grade judgment and a permanent hire buys one person’s whole calendar for a job that does not require the time or justify the cost,” says Anurag Kakar, CFO, Partner and Co-founder of Azurium, a fractional CFO firm based in New York.
He explains that boards and lenders want monthly cash discipline, given the cost of capital. A fractional appointment enables proper reporting to be put in place in a matter of weeks, which counts for a lot when a private equity-backed company is on a covenant clock.
“Finally, highly experienced finance people increasingly want a portfolio of two or three seats rather than one full-time job,” adds Kakar.
Paying for expertise
Kat Wellum-Kent, a fractional CFO and Founder of fractional leadership and operations group Fracteura, agrees that when companies add up the full cost of employment against what is actually needed, they can pay for the expertise rather than the empty capacity sitting around it.
“There is also a timing problem,” she says. “What a scaling business needs now can look completely different 12 months later. Go through the process of recruiting someone, get them up to speed and there is a real chance they are no longer the right fit once the business has moved past their level of expertise.”
The biggest risk with a fractional appointment, reckons Wellum-Kent, isn’t poor advice – it is the gap between the advice and what actually happens next. She believes this arrangement works best when someone brings both the senior thinking and the capacity to deliver it, rather than a consultant who hands over a slide deck and moves on.
In the era of AI, all companies that want to be successful need (or are even forced) to work on their operational as well as financial efficiency, says Gregor Zehetner, Founder of European fractional executive marketplace Fractionista. “Employing a full-time CFO can easily become a cost block in a start-up or scale-up company, reducing the runway significantly.”
He suggests leadership is changing as AI optimises tasks that used to fill an executive’s time and that what remains is judgement and experience in ambiguous situations.
Breadth of experience
The cost benefit is not the main attraction according to Matthew Allen, Founder of executive leadership consultancy Acentis.
“It is about accessing a calibre of executive that might otherwise be completely out of reach,” he says. “Because fractional executives typically work across more than one organisation, they bring a breadth of current experience. They are seeing different businesses, different problems and different solutions all the time, which can be incredibly valuable to a management team.”
The engagement may be temporary or last for years. Fractional describes the commitment of capacity, rather than dictating the length of the relationship, observes Paul Theisen, Founder of executive services firm TAG CXO.
“For a CFO, the need might be cash forecasting, lender negotiations, capital allocation or understanding which customers and projects actually produce a return,” he says. “A strong controller can keep the accounts accurate while the company lacks the financial leadership to decide what it can afford to do next. Growth can expose that gap just as quickly as a downturn.”
