What changed
A fractional CFO holds the seat one or two days a week. When those days were always on site, geography decided everything, because nobody was driving two hours each way for a single day.
Now most engagements run with the standing session remote and a day on site monthly or quarterly. That widens the pool from a town to a country, and for a seat where the right experience matters more than the right postcode, that is a straightforward improvement.
When being local still matters
- The finance team needs building rather than running. Hiring, training and rebuilding a function is done alongside people, and doing it through a screen takes far longer.
- The company is in difficulty. Cash crises, restructures and covenant breaches involve conversations nobody wants to have over video, and the ability to be in the room the same day has real value.
- The board or the bank expects to see them. Some lenders and some chairs simply want the finance lead physically present, and that is a constraint rather than a preference.
When it does not
Everything else, which is most of it. A rolling cash forecast, a board pack, a model, a data room, pricing work and month-end discipline are all done as well remotely as in person, and often better, because the operator is not spending two of the hours you paid for in a car.
The practical test is not distance. It is whether the operator can be on site when it counts, which usually means within a few hours of travel and willing to do it, and whether the time zones overlap enough for them to be reachable when something breaks.
What to ask instead of where they live
- How often would you expect to be on site, and what would you come in for?
- What is your notice for getting here if something goes wrong on a Tuesday?
- Which of your current engagements are remote, and how is that working?
- Have you done this in my sector, and at my stage, before?
If nobody local fits
Widen the search before you lower the bar. The gap between a CFO who has done your exact situation three times and one who is nearby is much larger than the gap a train journey creates.
London remains the deepest market for these seats in the UK, and a London-based operator working with a company elsewhere is now an ordinary arrangement rather than an unusual one.
Questions
- Can a fractional CFO work entirely remotely?
- Yes, and many engagements do. The parts of the job that genuinely need presence, building a team, working through a crisis, and some board settings, are the exceptions rather than the rule. What matters more than location is whether the operator can get to you when it counts and is willing to.
- Does a local fractional CFO cost less?
- Not usually. Rates are set by seat, sector and experience rather than by geography within a single country, and London operators do not automatically charge more for remote work elsewhere in the UK. Where location affects cost is travel, which is worth agreeing in writing before it starts.
- How often should a fractional CFO be on site?
- Most arrangements settle on monthly or quarterly, with more at the start. A sensible pattern is weekly or fortnightly on site for the first month while they learn the business and meet the team, dropping back once the rhythm is established.