CFO Signals

Deloitte’s North American CFO Signals survey is a quarterly survey that captures the perspectives and actions of chief financial officers from some of North America’s largest and most influential businesses. The survey gauges CFO sentiment across a number of fronts, including the economy, capital markets, and the issues keeping them up at night.

FEATURED INSIGHT

CFO confidence rose modestly in Q3

5.7

The 5.7 reading marks the second quarter in a row that the score has gone up—but it still remains in medium territory.

Key Trends

CFO confidence score

Finance chiefs’ overall level of confidence in current and future business conditions edged up in the third quarter, coming in at 5.7. That puts it solidly in medium territory. The previous quarter, the score stood at 5.4. A year ago, it was at 5.

Explore CFO confidence score

Assessment of regional economies

CFOs appear to be on the fence about the current status of the North American economy. Only 20% of the respondents think the region’s present economy is very good or good. Only 8% think it's very bad or bad. The rest? Neutral.

Explore the regional economies outlook

Own-company prospects and growth metrics

CFO enthusiasm about future business conditions in North America could best be described as tepid. The same sentiment does not apply to their expectations for their own organizations. Ninety percent of finance chiefs say their companies’ financial prospects are much better or better than they were three months ago. In Q2, that number was 48%.

Explore own-company prospects and growth metrics

Risk appetite

CFOs remained risk averse in the third quarter. Only 36% of respondents think now is a good time to be taking on greater risk. That’s only slightly above the reading last quarter—and on par with the two-year average of 39%.

Explore CFO risk appetite

Biggest internal and external risks

Cybersecurity, inflation, and interest rates topped the list (50%) of CFOs’ most worrying external risks this quarter. Talent (hiring, retention, or skills gap) was the most cited internal risk (51%), followed by efficiency and productivity (50%).

Explore internal and external risks

Capital markets in the latest quarter

Although the Fed has held steady on interest rates, CFOs’ increasingly see borrowing as a favorable way to raise funds. Well over half (53%) of respondents said debt financing is attractive—a considerable hike from the responses (18%) just a year ago.

Explore capital market insights

CFO confidence

What it measures: Overall CFO sentiment in the current quarter about economic and business conditions

KEY TAKEAWAY

While the 5.7 score is well below the 6.4 mark registered at the beginning of the year, it is somewhat higher than the confidence levels generally seen over the past two years.

Filters

Choose data to filter

Confidence level

SELECTED FILTERS

Methodology Note

Deloitte’s CFO confidence score is a measure of overall CFO sentiment in the current quarter about economic and business conditions. In short, this formula averages the scores of the five current and five future business environment questions in the survey, and then discounts the US equity markets and equity financing conditions by 80%, and discounts debt-financing conditions by 50%. Scores are as follows: “very low” (1 to 3), “low” (3 to 5), “medium” (5 to 6), “high” (6 to 8), and “very high” (8 to 10). The typical range observed in the score for the last 20 quarters is between 4 and 7.