Ask any UK mid-market chair what their CFO's contractual notice period is, and the answer is almost always six months.
Ask how much notice the last departing senior finance leader actually gave, and the honest answer is usually somewhere between four and ten weeks.
The gap between contractual notice and actual notice is the least-discussed CFO transition issue in the market. It is worth naming.
Why the gap exists
Contractual notice periods for CFOs are set at six months for good reasons. The business genuinely needs half a year to hire a replacement, transition institutional knowledge, and avoid a leadership vacuum in finance.
The problem is that six months of notice, actually served, is genuinely disruptive for the CFO who is leaving. They know they are leaving. Their new employer knows they are leaving. Their team knows they are leaving. Half a year of lame-duck leadership is bad for everyone.
So the negotiation happens. Almost every time.
The pattern is consistent. The CFO agrees to a shorter served period in exchange for one of three things: a specific handover deliverable, an agreement on garden leave, or a partial waiver of notice pay by both sides. The chair reluctantly agrees because the alternative is six months of a checked-out CFO.
What actually gets served
From the last two years of exit patterns we have observed:
- Roughly a third of CFOs serve between four and eight weeks of notice.
- Roughly a third serve between eight and twelve weeks.
- Roughly a fifth serve twelve to sixteen weeks.
- The remainder serve close to the full contractual period, usually because the CFO has no immediate next role and prefers the pay continuity.
The specific number depends on the CFO's leverage, the state of the finance function, and the CEO-CFO relationship at the point of departure. The pattern is clear enough that boards should assume actual notice will be less than half of contractual notice for planning purposes.
What the gap means for the search
Two implications.
Start the search earlier than the contractual notice implies. If your CFO has just handed in six-month notice, do not assume you have six months to hire. Assume you have ten weeks of served CFO time and plan the search accordingly.
Consider bridging with an interim. If the timeline from CFO departure to new CFO start is likely to include a gap of more than six weeks, an interim CFO for the intervening period is usually the right answer. This is particularly true if the business has a live deal, refinancing, or year-end audit in the gap window.
The handover conversation to have on day one of notice
The strongest handovers we have seen begin with a chair-led conversation in the first week of the CFO's notice period. The conversation covers three things.
How much notice will actually be served, honestly. Not the contractual number. The real one.
Which specific deliverables the CFO commits to completing before departure. Named documents, named handovers, named relationships.
Which projects the CFO explicitly hands off to the second layer. The Head of FP and A, the Group Financial Controller, whoever the number two is.
Boards that have this conversation in week one of notice tend to get cleaner exits and better handovers. Boards that avoid it usually find themselves in a scrappy final month.
What we recommend chairs standardise
Two small practices.
First, when hiring a new CFO, explicitly discuss the expected shape of notice on eventual departure. Not as a legal negotiation, as a cultural expectation. "When you leave, we expect twelve weeks of proper served notice with a named handover plan." Set the expectation at the front end.
Second, keep a "day-one-of-notice handover template" ready in the finance function's own documentation. When a CFO does depart, produce it in the first week rather than trying to invent it in the last month.
If you are managing a CFO departure now, or planning for one you can see coming, get in touch. We can move fast on interim bridging and permanent replacement in parallel.
